One of the longest-running terrorism lawsuits in American history has reached another major milestone after the nation’s highest court declined to intervene.
The decision leaves years of litigation intact and opens the door for
victims’ families to begin pursuing one of the largest civil terrorism judgments ever upheld in a U.S. court. The case has spent more than a decade moving through the federal court system, raising major constitutional questions about jurisdiction, foreign entities, and the rights of Americans injured in terrorist attacks overseas.
With the Supreme Court now declining to halt the case, the focus shifts from courtroom arguments to whether the judgment can actually be collected. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to block enforcement of a roughly $655 million judgment against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority stemming from a series of terrorist attacks in Israel that killed and injured American citizens during the early 2000s.
The justices denied an emergency request from the Palestinian defendants seeking to stay the judgment while they pursued additional legal options, allowing the verdict to remain in place without any justice publicly noting a dissent. The lawsuit was brought by American victims and family members under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a federal law that allows U.S. nationals harmed by acts of international terrorism to seek civil damages in American courts.
The case arose from a series of bombings and shootings carried out in Israel between 2002 and 2004 during the Second Intifada.
The plaintiffs alleged that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority provided financial and operational support to terrorist organizations responsible for carrying out the attacks.
A federal jury in Manhattan agreed with those claims and awarded the plaintiffs $218.5 million in compensatory damages.
Under the Anti-Terrorism Act, damage awards in terrorism cases are automatically tripled, increasing the judgment to approximately $655 million.
The litigation has traveled through the federal courts for more than a decade and has included repeated disputes over whether American courts had jurisdiction to hear claims against the Palestinian entities.
At one point, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
overturned the verdict after concluding the defendants lacked sufficient contacts with the United States to satisfy constitutional requirements for personal jurisdiction.
Congress later amended the Anti-Terrorism Act to expand jurisdiction over certain terrorism-related defendants, allowing cases involving foreign organizations accused of supporting terrorism to proceed under broader legal standards. Following that amendment, the Second Circuit reinstated the judgment, rejecting the defendants’ constitutional challenges to the revised statute.
After the Supreme Court declined to review the case through its normal appeals process, the Palestinian defendants filed an emergency application asking the justices to block enforcement while they explored additional legal remedies.
The Supreme Court’s decision to deny that request does not resolve the underlying legal questions on their merits, but it removes the defendants’ final procedural barrier to enforcement of the judgment. Attorneys representing the victims may now begin efforts to identify and seize assets that could be used to satisfy the award.
Whether the families ultimately recover any significant portion of the judgment remains uncertain because previous attempts to collect terrorism-related civil judgments against foreign organizations have often proven difficult.
The Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority maintain relatively limited assets within the reach of American courts, meaning collection efforts could require additional litigation in the United States and potentially in foreign jurisdictions.
The case also highlights Congress’ effort to strengthen legal remedies for American victims of terrorism by expanding access to U.S. courts when foreign organizations are accused of supporting terrorist attacks. The litigation comes during a period of heightened international attention surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and renewed debate over financial support provided to Palestinian governing institutions, Reuters reported.
Although the Supreme Court did not explain its decision to deny the emergency application, its decision leaves intact one of the largest terrorism-related civil judgments in American history.
