Supreme Court to Rule on the Constitutionality of Law Permitting Lawsuits for Overseas Terrorist Killings
The Second Circuit had earlier dismissed a widow’s lawsuit, determining that the accused Palestinian entities were entitled to due process rights that were not honored.
On December 6, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a widow’s lawsuit against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) regarding the murder of her husband by terrorists.
Simultaneously, the court also consented to hear a related case, United States v. PLO. The two appeals have been combined and will be addressed together on a date yet to be announced.
This new decision emerged after a federal appeals court sided with the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) by dismissing the lawsuit. Previously, Congress enacted a law mandating that courts hear claims from victims.
The Biden administration has expressed that the federal statute is constitutional and has encouraged the Supreme Court to take up Fuld’s case.
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The PSJVTA is a 2019 modification to the federal Anti-Terrorism Act, establishing a right for victims of terrorist attacks on Americans abroad to pursue legal action in U.S. courts. The Anti-Terrorism Act was influenced by a case against the PLO concerning the 1985 murder of American cruise ship passenger Leon Klinghoffer, who was shot in the face and thrown into the sea by PLO hijackers, according to the petition.
The PSJVTA stipulates that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority are deemed to have consented to being sued in U.S. courts if they make payments to “terrorists for killing or injuring Americans.” The Palestinian Authority has a so-called martyrs’ fund that compensates the families of Palestinians who are killed, imprisoned, or injured while perpetrating violence against Israel.
Fuld initiated her lawsuit in federal court in New York after her husband, Ari Fuld, was killed by a Palestinian terrorist allegedly motivated by the PLO near a West Bank shopping mall in 2018. Other victims of terrorism and their families also joined the same legal case, according to the petition.
After a seven-week trial, a jury determined in January 2022 that employees of the PLO and PA were “acting within the scope of their employment” and had planned or participated in all of the attacks. The plaintiffs were awarded $218.5 million in damages, a sum that was subsequently tripled under federal law.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned this ruling in September 2023, concluding that the lower court lacked the authority to hear the case.
The circuit court reasoned that the defendants had the right to due process because “neither the PLO nor the PA is acknowledged by the United States as a sovereign state.” U.S. courts were unable to preside over the case since the defendants were “at home” in “Palestine” and the events in question occurred “entirely outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”
If the Supreme Court hears the case early in the upcoming year, a ruling is anticipated by June 2025.
