The United States(US) Supreme Court has revived long-running lawsuits against Palestinian authorities from Americans killed or wounded in attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank. In a 9-0 ruling, the court upheld a statute passed by Congress to facilitate lawsuits against Palestinian authorities by Americans injured or killed in attacks abroad.
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 the Anti-terrorism Act of 1990.
The plaintiffs include families who won a $655 million judgment in a civil case alleging Palestinian organizations were responsible for shootings and bombings around Jerusalem from 2002 to 2004. Relatives of Ari Fuld, a Jewish settler fatally stabbed by a Palestinian in 2018, are also among the plaintiffs.
Kent Yalowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said, “The plaintiffs, US families who had loved ones maimed or murdered in PLO-sponsored terror attacks, have been waiting for justice for many years. I am very hopeful that the case will soon be resolved without subjecting these families to further protracted and unnecessary litigation.”
The court’s decision was based on a law passed in 2019, which automatically subjects the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization to jurisdiction in US courts if they conduct certain activities in the United States or make payments to people who attack Americans.
Roberts wrote that Congress and the president enacted the jurisdictional law based on their “considered judgment to subject the PLO and PA 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”.