Key Points

  • SCOTUS reversed the Fourth Circuit's 'battlefield preemption' doctrine, holding state tort claims against military contractors survive where the government did not order or authorize the challenged conduct.
  • The Court clarified that Boyle v. United Technologies protects contractors only when the government directed the specific conduct at issue, not merely because work occurred in a wartime combat zone.
  • The FTCA's combatant-activities exception protects only the federal government's own immunity, not that of its contractors, per United States v. Orleans.
  • A dissenting opinion argued that the Constitution's war-powers structure implicitly preempts such suits regardless of Boyle, warning of discovery into military judgments and potential application of foreign law.

The Supreme Court on April 22, 2026, revived a former Army specialist's negligence suit against military contractor Fluor Corp., rejecting a Fourth Circuit rule that had shielded battlefield contractors from state tort liability across the board. The Court vacated the judgment below and remanded the case for further proceedings.

The case arose from a 2016 suicide bombing at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan carried out by Ahmad Nayeb, an Afghan national employed under the military's 'Afghan First' hiring initiative. Winston Hencely, then a 20-year-old Army specialist, confronted Nayeb before he could reach a crowd at a Veterans Day race; the resulting blast killed several people, wounded many more, and left Hencely with a fractured skull and brain injuries.

An Army investigation found Fluor primarily responsible for the attack, concluding that the company negligently supervised Nayeb, failed to enforce badge and escort policies, and allowed him to obtain tools later used to build the bomb. Hencely sued Fluor in the District of South Carolina for negligent supervision, negligent entrustment, and negligent retention under state law.

The district court granted summary judgment to Fluor, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed, applying its 'battlefield preemption' doctrine. That rule held that state-law claims against contractors integrated into combatant activities under military command authority are preempted during wartime, regardless of whether the contractor violated its own instructions from the military.

The Court rejected that rule as unmoored from constitutional text, statute, or precedent. 'The preemption rule on which the Fourth Circuit relied lacks any foundation in the Constitution, federal statutes, or our precedents,' the opinion states.

The Court emphasized that no statute expressly preempts the suit, and that the Federal Tort Claims Act's combatant-activities exception protects the government's own immunity, not that of its contractors. Citing United States v. Orleans, the opinion noted that the exception 'does not apply to suits against federal contractors.'

Turning to Boyle v. United Technologies Corp., the government-contractor defense at the center of the case, the Court explained that Boyle protects a contractor only when the government directed it to do the very thing challenged in the suit. The opinion distinguished Boyle's procurement-contract setting from Fluor's performance contract at Bagram, concluding that 'Boyle's reasoning contradicts the Fourth Circuit's analysis.'

Boyle's rationale justifies no such blanket preemption.

Applying Boyle's own hypothetical about a government-specified air conditioner, the Court concluded that Fluor's contract was 'like the one for the hypothetical air conditioner, not the helicopter'—meaning Fluor could have complied with both its military obligations and state tort duties, since the Army did not require it to leave Nayeb unsupervised or grant him unauthorized access to tools.

The Court also rejected the Fourth Circuit's broader theory that, as the lower court had put it, 'it is the imposition per se of the state . . . tort law that conflicts with the federal policy' of limiting state regulation of the military during wartime. The Court held that any comparable federal interest would preempt state law only where the challenged conduct can reasonably be considered the military's own conduct or decision—a showing the Fourth Circuit itself said was unnecessary here.

Addressing arguments that the Constitution's war-powers structure implicitly bars the suit, the majority traced a line of precedent, including Little v. Barreme and Mitchell v. Harmony, concluding that 'the assignment of those powers to Congress and the Executive has never been understood to bar all war-related tort suits.' The Court also held that Fluor could not invoke the Yearsley doctrine, which protects a contractor only when it is sued for carrying out exactly what the government directed it to do; because Fluor allegedly acted outside the authority the military granted it, that defense did not apply.

In dissent, one opinion framed the case around the scope of state authority over an active battlefield: '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?' The dissent argued that the Constitution's assignment of war powers exclusively to the federal government implicitly preempts the suit, warning that litigation would force discovery into sensitive security judgments and could require applying Afghan tort law, which the dissent called an additional complication the majority left unresolved.

'War is the exclusive domain of the Federal Government, but the Court allows state (or foreign law) to encroach on that domain,' the dissent concluded.

The decision displaces the 'battlefield preemption' framework the Fourth Circuit had developed following In re KBR, Inc., Burn Pit Litigation and Saleh v. Titan Corp., under which contractors integrated into combat operations enjoyed near-categorical immunity from state tort suits. Defense counsel relying on that framework will need to reassess their positions.

For military-services contractors, the ruling narrows the government-contractor defense to its Boyle-era core: protection applies only where the government specifically directed the challenged conduct, not merely because the work occurred in a combat zone or under a broad contractual relationship with the military.

The case now returns to the lower courts for further proceedings on Hencely's negligent supervision, entrustment, and retention claims under South Carolina law.