The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law allowing Americans injured by acts of terror in the Middle East to take Palestinian leadership groups to U.S. courts for damages.
In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (PSJVTA) does not violate the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s due process rights by forcing them to consent to federal courts’ authority.
The decision means lawsuits by U.S. victims of terrorist attacks in Israel can move forward in American courts.
The justices reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit’s ruling finding the law denied the groups a fair legal process and directed the lower court to hold further proceedings consistent with the court’s opinion.
“The PSJVTA reasonably ties the assertion of federal jurisdiction over the PLO and PA to conduct that involves the United States and implicates sensitive foreign policy matters within the prerogative of the political branches,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
“We hold that the statute’s provision for personal jurisdiction comports with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” he said.
Congress enacted the law in 2019 to let victim lawsuits move forward against the PA and PLO, responding to a series of court decisions that found the victims’ families had no jurisdiction to sue.
The justices consolidated two cases for arguments in April, a Justice Department appeal and an appeal by the family of Ari Fuld, an Israeli American fatally stabbed at a shopping mall in the West Bank in 2018.
The Justice Department argued that Congress determined the PA and PLO would be made open to U.S. civil suits if they made payments to representatives of terrorists who injured or killed Americans or maintained a certain presence in the country.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who held the role in the Biden administration, wrote in court papers that a lower court’s finding those conditions fall short rests on a “rigid and misconceived” application of the law.
The Biden administration initially intervened in Fuld’s case — which received bipartisan support, including through a friend-of-the-court brief authorized by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — and another case brought by 11 American families who sued the Palestinian leadership groups two decades ago for several attacks in Israel, winning more than $650 million in a 2015 trial.
In April, under the Trump administration, Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler argued before the justices that the legislative and the executive branches together determined it would prevent terrorism to find the PA and PLO consented to jurisdiction in federal courts. The justices should not override that assessment, owing both branches “virtually absolute deference,” he said.
A lawyer for the PA and PLO argued personal jurisdiction is “over and above” what Congress can prescribe. He pointed to piracy as an example, noting that while piracy has been illegal since the nation’s founding, “no one” thought Congress would let pirates be tried in the U.S. without being present there.
“That’s never been the law,” lawyer Mitchell Berger said.