In a major blow to the firearms industry, the U.S. Supreme Court will not block the families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting from suing the gun maker Remington.

The nation’s highest court on Tuesday denied an appeal by the Remington Arms Company to review a lower court’s ruling that allowed the families to take on the gun maker in court over how it marketed the rifle used in the 2012 school massacre.

“This simply means that the case can proceed under Connecticut state law, and it doesn’t mean that the plaintiffs will prevail,” says Robert Spitzer, a gun policy expert and chairman of the political science department at the State University of New York at Cortland.

But Spitzer and other experts say Remington could be forced to provide documents that could yield damaging internal memos—similar to the way a major civil settlement in 1998 forced the tobacco industry to disclose millions of pages of internal communications that revealed deceptive marketing practices...

The National Rifle Association (NRA) said perpetrators of shootings who misuse firearms are the “real problem,” not gun manufacturers. “Lawsuits that deflect attention away from mental illness and criminals in order to blame inanimate objects won’t reduce violent crime or make anyone safer,” Jason Ouimet, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement.