As plaintiffs seek monetary damages for violence years ago in Israel and the occupied West Bank, the US Supreme Court has upheld a law that was passed by Congress to facilitate lawsuits brought against Palestinian authorities by Americans killed or injured in attacks abroad.
The Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization’s right to a fair trial was violated by the US Constitution’s 9-0 ruling overturned a lower court’s ruling.
According to the ruling’s author, conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the 2019 legal system adhered to the Fifth Amendment’s requirements for due process.
According to Roberts, it is permissible for the federal government to create a “clearly narrow jurisdictional provision” that ensures that Americans who have been injured or killed by terrorist acts have a legitimate forum to file a lawsuit against their rights under the Anti-Terror Act of 1990.
The lower court’s decision to downturn a law provision had been challenged by the US government and a group of American victims and their families.
Families who were named in the plaintiffs’ lawsuit in 2015 won a $655m judgment in a civil lawsuit alleging that the Palestinian organizations carried out a number of shootings and bombings in Jerusalem between 2002 and 2004. Additionally, there are relatives of Jewish settler Ari Fuld, who was fatally stabbed by a Palestinian in 2018.
Jewish settlements on Palestinian-owned land are regarded as illegal under international law, even as this decision is made.
According to Kent Yalowitz, a plaintiffs’ attorney, “the plaintiffs, US families who had loved ones killed or maimed in PLO-sponsored terror attacks, have been waiting for justice for many years.”
Yalowitz continued, “I’m very hopeful that the case will be settled without these families having to go through any more drawn-out and unnecessary litigation.”
The case was framed by Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran and Gaza. More than 55 000 people have died and 130 000 have been wounded since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
For years, US courts have been debating whether they have jurisdiction in cases involving the Palestinian Authority and PLO for legal actions taken abroad.
The PLO and the Palestinian Authority automatically “consent” to jurisdiction if they engage in certain activities in or pay Americans who attack them, according to the language at issue in the 2019 law.
In a comprehensive legal response to “halt, deter, and disrupt” acts of international terrorism that threaten the life and limb of Americans, Roberts wrote in the ruling on Friday that Congress and the president enacted the jurisdictional law based on their “considered judgment to subject the PLO and PA (Palestinian Authority) to liability in US courts.
In 2022, US District Judge Jesse Furman of New York declared that the law violated the Palestinian Authority and the PLO’s due process rights. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in New York, upheld that ruling.
The government’s appeal was initiated by President Joe Biden’s administration, which later received support from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Source: Aljazeera
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