US Supreme Court upholds law on suing Palestinian authorities over attacks

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court upheld on Friday a statute passed by Congress to facilitate lawsuits against Palestinian 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 Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization to due process under the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. 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 in a civil case alleging that the Palestinian organizations were responsible for a series of shootings and bombings around Jerusalem from 2002 to 2004. They also include relatives of Ari Fuld, a Jewish settler in the Israel-occupied West Bank who was fatally stabbed by a Palestinian in 2018.

The ongoing violence involving Israel and the Palestinians served as a backdrop to the case.

U.S. courts for years have grappled over whether they have jurisdiction in cases involving the Palestinian Authority and PLO for actions taken abroad.

Under the language at issue in the 2019 law, the PLO and Palestinian Authority automatically “consent” to jurisdiction if they conduct certain activities in the United States or make payments to people who attack Americans.

New York-based U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled in 2022 that the law violated the due process rights of the PLO and Palestinian Authority guaranteed under the Constitution. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.

President Joe Biden’s administration initiated the government’s appeal, which subsequently was taken up by President Donald Trump’s administration. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 1.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)