The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed a permanently disabled Army veteran to sue the military contractor whose employee carried out a Taliban suicide bombing at Bagram Airfield, and the vote split the bench in a way nobody's ideological scorecard predicted.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion. Joining him were Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, three liberals and two conservatives forming a coalition that cut clean across the Court's usual fault lines. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The case centers on Winston Tyler Hencely, a former Army specialist who confronted a Taliban operative on the base in Afghanistan in 2016. The operative, who worked for respondent Fluor Corporation, detonated a suicide vest. Hencely suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries. He is now permanently disabled.
Hencely sued Fluor Corporation under state-law tort claims, alleging the contractor negligently retained and supervised the attacker. Both the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit sided with Fluor, holding that Hencely's claims were preempted, essentially that the federal government's war powers shielded the contractor from state-court liability.
The Supreme Court vacated that judgment and sent the case back for further proceedings. The six-justice majority rejected a broad "battlefield preemption" theory that would have blocked state-law claims tied to combat-zone activities, even when the contractor's conduct was neither ordered nor authorized by the federal government.
Thomas, writing for the majority, laid out the facts in plain terms:
"In 2016, a Taliban operative working for respondent Fluor Corporation, a military contractor, carried out a suicide-bomb attack at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. After then-Army Specialist Winston T. Hencely confronted him, the bomber detonated his suicide vest. As a result of the injuries he received, Hencely is now permanently disabled."
The opinion went further, noting that the military itself backed Hencely's version of events. Thomas wrote that Fluor's conduct "was not authorized by the military and even violated instructions the military had given it as a condition of operating on the base." That detail is worth pausing on. The contractor didn't just fail to follow best practices. It allegedly broke the rules the military set as a prerequisite for being on the base at all.
The alignment of the Court's three liberal justices with Thomas on a case involving military contractors, war-zone liability, and federal preemption defies the usual assumptions about how the bench divides. This was not a culture-war case. It was a question of whether a private company could hide behind the Constitution's war powers after allegedly ignoring the military's own directives, and getting a soldier maimed in the process.
The core of the majority opinion rested on a straightforward principle: if the federal government didn't order or authorize the conduct that caused the injury, there is no constitutional basis to preempt a state's authority over ordinary tort claims.
Thomas wrote:
"The Fourth Circuit's decision held Hencely's claims preempted even though the conduct complained of was neither ordered nor authorized by the Federal Government. No provision of the Constitution and no federal statute justifies that preemption of the State's ordinary authority over tort suits. Nor does any precedent of this Court command such a result."
That language is worth reading twice. The majority found no constitutional provision, no federal statute, and no prior Supreme Court precedent supporting the lower court's decision to throw out Hencely's case. Three different legal grounds, all absent.
Just The News reported that Thomas emphasized military contractors "are not automatically shielded from liability when their conduct was not authorized by the military, even in war zones." That framing draws a clear line: operating in a combat zone does not grant blanket legal immunity to a private company that disregards the military's own instructions.
For conservatives who believe in accountability and the rule of law, this is not a difficult principle. A government contractor that violates the terms of its arrangement with the U.S. military should not be able to invoke the Constitution's war powers as a shield against the very soldier it harmed.
Justice Alito, writing for the three dissenters, raised a different concern, one rooted in the constitutional separation of powers between the federal government and the states, particularly in matters of war.
Alito posed two questions and answered them both with a firm "no":
"May a State regulate security arrangements on a military base in an active warzone? May state judges and juries pass judgment on questions that are inextricably tied to military decisions that balance war-related risks against long-term strategic objectives? In my judgment, the answer to these questions must be 'no,' and for that reason, this state-law tort case is preempted by the Constitution's grant of war powers exclusively to the Federal Government."
The dissent's worry is not frivolous. There is a legitimate concern about state courts second-guessing operational military decisions in active conflict zones. Alito argued that allowing this kind of lawsuit opens the door to state-level interference in federal war-making, an area the Constitution reserves exclusively to the national government.
He pressed the point further, writing that "the Constitution divides authority between the Federal Government and the States in many areas, but not when it comes to war. War is the exclusive domain of the Federal Government, but the Court allows state (or foreign law) to encroach on that domain."
Roberts and Kavanaugh joined Alito without writing separately. The dissent reflects a real tension in conservative legal thought: the commitment to federal supremacy in national defense versus the commitment to holding private actors accountable when they cause harm through their own negligence.
The 6-3 lineup scrambled the Court's familiar teams. Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett, all conservative appointees, joined Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Meanwhile, three justices often regarded as part of the Court's right flank dissented.
This kind of split is rare enough to merit attention. The liberal justices who have clashed among themselves on other recent cases found common ground here with Thomas on a principle that transcends ideology: a private contractor that allegedly broke the military's own rules should not escape accountability by wrapping itself in the flag of federal preemption.
Sotomayor, who has been vocal in recent terms about her disagreements with the Court's direction, sided with the majority without writing separately. Neither did Kagan or Jackson.
The decision also fits a broader pattern of the current Court producing outcomes that defy easy partisan labeling. Recent terms have seen unexpected coalitions form on cases involving law enforcement, free speech, and government power, a reminder that the justices are not simply proxies for the parties that appointed them.
The Supreme Court's ruling does not mean Hencely wins his case. It means he gets to make his case. The Court vacated the Fourth Circuit's judgment and remanded the matter for further proceedings. Hencely will now have the chance to argue his state-law tort claims against Fluor Corporation in a lower court, something two federal courts previously denied him.
Several questions remain unanswered. The specific military instructions Fluor allegedly violated have not been detailed publicly. The identity of the Taliban operative has not been disclosed. The precise damages Hencely seeks beyond compensation for his permanent disability are not clear from the Court's opinion.
But the core facts are not in dispute. A U.S. Army specialist confronted a threat on an American military base. A contractor's employee detonated a suicide vest. The soldier who tried to stop it now lives with a fractured skull, brain injuries, and permanent disability. And both Hencely and the U.S. military say the contractor's conduct was unauthorized and violated the military's own rules.
The lower courts said none of that mattered, that the war powers of the federal government preempted any state-law remedy. Six justices, spanning the full ideological range of the bench, said otherwise.
The shifting alignments on today's Court can confuse observers who want every case to fit a red-blue template. This one doesn't. It fits a simpler template: a soldier got hurt, a contractor allegedly broke the rules, and the Court said the soldier deserves his day in court.
When accountability is the principle, the left-right divide has a way of disappearing. That's how it should work.
