Lawfare: Supreme Court unanimously rules that American terror victims can sue PA and PLO
Hams next? Let the lawsuits commence! [IsraelTimes] Justices uphold 2019 law allowing American citizens harmed in attacks outside the United States to file lawsuits against the Palestinian entities
The US Supreme Court upheld on Friday a statute passed by Congress to facilitate lawsuits against Paleostinian authorities by Americans killed or injured in attacks abroad as plaintiffs pursue monetary damages for violence years ago in Israel and the West Bank.
The 9-0 ruling overturned a lower court’s decision that the 2019 law, the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, violated the rights of the Paleostinian Authority and Paleostine Liberation Organization to due process under the US Constitution.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the ruling, said the 2019 jurisdictional law comported with due process rights enshrined in the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.
"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 compensation under a federal law known as the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, Roberts wrote.
The US government and a group of American victims and their families had appealed the lower court’s decision that struck down a provision of the law.
Among the plaintiffs are families who in 2015 won a $655 million judgment
Goodness! Any chance they’ll actually get anything like that amount out of the other side? in a civil case alleging that the Paleostinian entities were responsible for a series of terror shootings and bombings around Jerusalem from 2002 to 2004. They also include relatives of Ari Fuld, who was fatally stabbed by a Paleostinian terrorist in 2018.
"The plaintiffs, US families who had loved ones maimed or murdered in PLO-sponsored terror attacks, have been waiting for justice for many years," said Kent Yalowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
"I am very hopeful that the case will soon be resolved without subjecting these families to further protracted and unnecessary litigation," Yalowitz added.
The ongoing fighting involving Israel and the Paleostinians served as a backdrop to the case, with Fuld’s murderer released as part of a hostage-prisoner exchange earlier this year between Israel and the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
-ruling Hamas
..always the voice of sweet reason...
terror group.
US courts for years have grappled over whether they have jurisdiction in cases involving the Paleostinian Authority and PLO for actions taken abroad.
A fair question. Under the language at issue in the 2019 law, the PLO and Paleostinian Authority automatically "consent" to jurisdiction if they conduct certain activities in the United States or make payments to people who attack Americans.
Roberts in Friday’s ruling wrote that Congress and the president enacted the jurisdictional law based on their "considered judgment to subject the PLO and PA (Paleostinian Authority) to liability in US courts as part of a comprehensive legal response to ’halt, deter and disrupt’ acts of international terrorism that threaten the life and limb of American citizens."
New York-based US District Judge Jesse Furman ruled in 2022 that the law violated the due process rights of the PLO and Paleostinian Authority.
Do terror orgs have due process rights? The New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.
President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. Joe's wife and daughter weren't killed by a drunk driver. He didn't graduate with three or even two degrees, wasn't in the top half of his law class, and his daddy didn't come home from a hard day's work in the mines and play football with the guys. The NAACP hasn't endorsed him every time he's run....
’s administration initiated the government’s appeal, which subsequently was taken up by President Donald Trump
...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
’s administration. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 1.
Posted by: trailing wife 2025-06-21 |