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.

The justices unanimously held in that case that Twitter did not "knowingly" provide substantial assistance to the Islamic State group and thus couldn't be held liable for aiding and abetting under the Anti-Terrorism Act. They said that the plaintiffs failed to show that Twitter and other tech companies did more than "transmit information by billions of people."

The federal government told the high court that while it "condemns in the strongest terms" the terrorist acts that caused the servicemembers' injuries and the "profound loss respondents have suffered," the D.C. Circuit's ruling was rendered without the benefit of the justices' guidance in Taamneh.

"That intervening decision clarified the standard for aiding-and-abetting liability under the ATA in ways that may bear on the court of appeals' analysis," it said.

In their Tuesday brief, the pharmaceutical companies said that if the high court chooses not to grant a GVR, then a plenary review of the lower court's ruling was still appropriate and "urgently needed" because it created two circuit splits that "carry serious foreign-policy consequences."

The companies said that the D.C. Circuit particularly split with four other circuits when it comes to the issue of direct liability by holding that indirect support to attackers can satisfy the ATA's proximate-causation requirement.

They said the D.C. Circuit also split with three other circuits on aiding-and-abetting liability by holding that a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization's generalized support and encouragement to a non-designated group means the designated organization plans or authorizes every attack carried out by the non-designated group.

They argued however that the case "more than satisfies the usual standard for a GVR, and there is substantial reason to expect that a proper application of Taamneh will lead the lower courts to dismiss the complaint on remand."

Representatives for the pharmaceutical companies and the servicemembers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

AstraZeneca UK Ltd. and its affiliates are represented by Paul S. Mishkin, David B. Toscano, and Craig T. Cagney of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

GE Healthcare USA Holding LLC and its affiliates are represented by John B. Bellinger III, David J. Weiner, and Robert Reeves Anderson of Arnold & Porter.

Johnson & Johnson, its affiliates, and Ortho Biologics LLC are represented by Kannon K. Shanmugam, Jeh C. Johnson, and Jessica S. Carey of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP.

Pfizer is represented by Lisa S. Blatt, Christopher N. Manning, Melissa B. Collins, Sarah M. Harris, and Aaron Z. Roper of Williams & Connolly LLP.

Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. and its affiliates are represented by Beth S. Brinkmann, Maureen F. Browne, David M. Zionts, and S. Conrad Scott of Covington & Burling LLP, and David W. Bowker, Catherine M.A. Carroll, Leon T. Kenworthy, and Donna M. Farag of WilmerHale.

The servicemembers and their families are represented by David C. Frederick, Joshua D. Branson, Andrew E. Goldsmith, and Derek C. Reinbold of Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick PLLC.

The case is AstraZeneca UK Ltd. et al. v. Atchley et al., case number 23-9, before the Supreme Court of the United States.