The wide-ranging fallout from the Supreme Court’s new terrorism decision, explained

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas appears before swearing in Pam Bondi as US Attorney General in the Oval Office at the White House on February 5, 2025, in Washington, DC. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images The facts underlying Hencely v. Fluor Corporation, a case the Supreme Court handed down on Wednesday, are horrible and tragic. During a 2016 Veterans Day celebration on Bagram Airfield, a US military base in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber named Ahmad Nayeb detonated an explosion that killed five people and wounded 17 more. One of the wounded was Army Specialist Winston Hencely, who confronted the bomber and attempted to question him — causing Nayeb to set off his suicide vest shortly after Hencely approached him. The Army believes that Hencely’s actions “likely prevent[ed] a far greater tragedy,” because the soldier stopped Nayeb from triggering the explosion in a location where it could have killed more people. Hencely is now permanently disabled from skull and brain injuries suffered during the bombing. The legal issue in Hencely involves “preemption,” a constitutional principle dictating that, when federal law and state law are at odds with each other, the federal law prevails and will often displace the state law entirely. After the bombing, Hencely sued Fluor Corporation, a military contractor that employed Nayeb, claiming that Fluor violated South Carolina law by failing to adequately supervise Nayeb. Fluor has two subsidiaries in South Carolina. In Hencely,