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Pharmaceutical companies urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to heed the federal government's suggestion to throw out a D.C. Circuit ruling holding them potentially liable for allegedly financing terror attacks against U.S. servicemembers through contracts with the Iraqi government.

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, Pfizer Inc., and several other pharmaceutical giants said that a brief the justices invited the government to file "easily" satisfied the standard required for the high court to simultaneously grant the companies' petition for review of the D.C. Circuit ruling, vacate the ruling, and order a remand.

The companies pointed the justices to the government's contention that the Supreme Court's May 2023 opinion in Twitter v. Taamneh changed or clarified relevant legal principles that could alter the lower appellate court's decision. They argued that a "grant-vacate-remand," or GVR, was thus appropriate to look into whether they "consciously, voluntarily, and culpably participated" in specific acts of international terrorism, which they said the D.C. Circuit never considered.

"Indeed, the government goes further, underscoring ... that the D.C. Circuit 'made similar errors' to those that led this court to reverse in Taamneh," the companies said in a supplemental brief.

The companies had first urged the Supreme Court to grant a GVR in a July 2023 petition for certiorari challenging a January 2022 D.C. Circuit ruling that revived claims a group of injured U.S. servicemembers and families of deceased servicemembers initiated back in 2017.

The servicemembers and families had sued the companies for allegedly providing medical goods and funds to Iraq's Health Ministry, which the allegedly Hezbollah-linked military group, Jaysh al-Mahdi, had taken over. The families claimed that the companies secured lucrative medical supply contracts with the Iraqi government through payments and gifts to Jaysh al-Mahdi, ultimately helping fund terrorist attacks between 2005 and 2011.

A D.C federal court ruled in the companies' favor, but the D.C. Circuit overturned and remanded that ruling for three reasons, such as that the servicemembers sufficiently alleged at the motion to dismiss stage that the companies "knowingly provided substantial assistance" to Jaysh al-Mahdi.

The pharmaceutical companies turned to the high court after the D.C. Circuit denied the petition for a rehearing en banc in February 2023.

At the Supreme Court's invitation in October to file a brief expressing the federal government's views on the case, the government said last month that the justices should grant a GVR in light of Taamneh.