Overview
- The Supreme Court, which ruled Wednesday, vacated a lower court decision and let Army veteran Winston Hencely pursue state‑law negligence claims against Fluor over a 2016 bombing at Bagram Airfield.
- Hencely was gravely injured after confronting Ahmad Nayeb, a Fluor employee who built a suicide bomb on base using work tools and roamed unescorted for about an hour, an Army probe found.
- Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that no constitutional text, statute, or prior precedent creates broad 'battlefield preemption' for contractors and that defenses like the 1988 Boyle case apply only when a contractor followed government specifications.
- The dissent by Justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh warned that letting state juries weigh wartime decisions intrudes on federal control of war and foreign affairs, including policies that encouraged hiring Afghan workers.
- The decision clears Hencely’s suit to proceed and could prompt other paused cases by troops and families to move forward, pressuring contractors to tighten vetting and on‑base supervision in future military contracts.