Biden administration asks Supreme Court to revive terror victims’ suits against Palestinian Authority

The Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court to uphold a 2019 law that would allow terror victims’ lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to move forward. 

It adds new weight to an existing appeal already filed at the high court that has drawn support from House leadership in both parties and several senators. 

At issue is whether victims can haul the PA and PLO into U.S. courts under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act, which provides Americans injured by acts of terrorism a pathway to sue for damages. 

In response to a series of court decisions dismissing such cases for lack of personal jurisdiction, Congress in 2019 passed a law providing that federal courts had authority to hear the lawsuits against the PA and PLO. 

The Biden administration’s petition, which was docketed Monday, urges the Supreme Court to take up its appeal of a lower decision finding the law violated constitutional due process protections under the Fifth Amendment. 

“That due-process holding is incorrect and undermines Congress’s judgment that the [law] is an important measure to further U.S. interests and protect and compensate U.S. nationals,” the petition reads. 

The Biden administration intervened in two underlying cases brought by U.S. citizens injured in attacks, or their survivors, to defend the 2019 law. 

In the first case, a group of 11 American families originally sued the PA and PLO two decades ago for various attacks in Israel, winning $655.5 million at trial in 2015. The second case was brought by the spouse and children of Ari Fuld, an Israeli American fatally stabbed at a shopping mall in the West Bank in 2018.

Fuld’s family already appealed to the Supreme Court last month, and the case has garnered bipartisan support.

The House filed a friend-of-the-court brief with authorization from House leadership in both parties, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). 

“If this latest ruling is allowed to stand, American victims of international terrorism will be unlikely to get their day in court, and foreign terrorists will not need to worry about civil judgments draining their resources. Yet these are the exact policy objectives that Congress has consistently attempted to advance,” it read. 

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo filed a similar brief, as did a bipartisan group of lawmakers: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.).