US victims can sue Palestinian terrorists, Supreme Court rules unanimously

Americans who are victims of Palestinian terror can sue for damages in U.S. courts, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday, upholding the constitutionality of the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019.

The 2019 law expands the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows Americans harmed by overseas terror attacks to sue foreign entities, including the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, for damages.

“It is permissible for the federal government to craft a narrow jurisdictional provision that ensures, as part of a broader foreign policy agenda, that Americans injured or killed by acts of terror have an adequate forum in which to vindicate their right to Anti-Terrorism Act compensation,” wrote John Roberts, the high court chief justice.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told JNS that “this is an important milestone in bringing justice to victims of terror, and holding terrorists to account wherever they are.”

Associate justices Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Roberts in the majority opinion. Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion, which Neil Gorsuch joined.

Thomas wrote that “the court leaves for another day the task of defining ‘the Fifth Amendment’s outer limits on the territorial jurisdiction of federal courts,’” referring to the amendment that guarantees due process, among other things.

“I would take a different approach,” he wrote. “When interpreting constitutional provisions, we must look to ‘the text of the Constitution’ as well as ‘historical evidence from the framing’ that can illuminate ‘the intent of those who drafted and ratified it.’”

“The critical question in these cases is what boundaries the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee, as originally understood, places on the federal government’s power to extend personal jurisdiction over respondents,” he wrote. “Historical evidence demonstrates that the answer is ‘none.’”

Under the Fifth Amendment, every “person” is protected from being “deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” so, Thomas wrote, the respondents, which include the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority, “must establish both that they are ‘person(s)’ protected by the Fifth Amendment and that the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act transgresses their due process rights.”

“There are strong reasons to think that each poses an independently fatal problem for respondents. At a minimum, however, I would conclude today that the PSJVTA’s jurisdictional provisions do not violate any plausible understanding of due process,” he wrote. “I am skeptical that entities such as the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority enjoy any constitutional rights at all, let alone qualify as ‘person(s)’ for purposes of the Fifth Amendment.”

Thomas added that the Fifth Amendment “was never understood to constrain Congress’s ability to extend federal jurisdiction.”

“The federal government has always possessed the power to extend its jurisdiction beyond the nation’s borders, and, as understood in 1791, the Fifth Amendment did not limit this sovereign prerogative,” he wrote.

The plaintiffs in Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization included Miriam Fuld, on behalf of her husband Ari Fuld, who was killed by a Palestinian terrorist in 2018 in Judea and Samaria, and other U.S. victims of Palestinian terror attacks between 2002 and 2004.

“OK, so this is a big deal indeed. My late brother Ari’s wife appealed to the Supreme Court and won. Unanimously,” Hillel Fuld stated. “Now, any American citizen affected by Palestinian terror can sue the Palestinian Authority in American courts. Pretty unprecedented. Wow.”

© JNS