“I am skeptical that entities such as the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority enjoy any constitutional rights at all,” wrote Clarence Thomas, an associate justice of the high court.

By Vita Fellig

(June 20, 2025 / JNS) Americans who are victims of Palestinian terror can sue for damages in U.S. courts, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday, upholding the constitutionality of the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019.

The 2019 law expands the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows Americans harmed by overseas terror attacks to sue foreign entities, including the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, for damages.

“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 Anti-Terrorism Act compensation,” wrote John Roberts, the high court chief justice.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told JNS that “this is an important milestone in bringing justice to victims of terror, and holding terrorists to account wherever they are.”

Ahmad Sharawi, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that the decision represents a “major legal milestone for American victims of terrorism.”

“The PLO and PA are no longer shielded from accountability for incentivizing the killing of Israel through their ‘pay-for-slay’ policy,” he said. “The Supreme Court’s ruling challenged the previous court ruling that justified that U.S. courts cannot hold foreign entities if they haven’t consented to U.S. jurisdiction.”

Citing the Fifth amendment, the Palestinian Authority had long argued that it was immune from prosecution, according to Sharawi.

“This case sets the precedent that U.S. jurisdiction can now entail terrorist groups that harm American citizens despite their lack of consent to U.S. jurisdiction,” he said.

‘For another day’

Associate justices Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Roberts in the majority opinion. Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion, which Neil Gorsuch joined.

Thomas wrote that “the court leaves for another day the task of defining ‘the Fifth Amendment’s outer limits on the territorial jurisdiction of federal courts,’” referring to the amendment that guarantees due process, among other things.

“I would take a different approach,” he wrote. “When interpreting constitutional provisions, we must look to ‘the text of the Constitution’ as well as ‘historical evidence from the framing’ that can illuminate ‘the intent of those who drafted and ratified it.’”

“The critical question in these cases is what boundaries the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee, as originally understood, places on the federal government’s power to extend personal jurisdiction over respondents,” he wrote. “Historical evidence demonstrates that the answer is ‘none.’”

Under the Fifth Amendment, every “person” is protected from being “deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” so, Thomas wrote, the respondents, which include the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority, “must establish both that they are ‘person(s)’ protected by the Fifth Amendment and that the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act transgresses their due process rights.”

“I am skeptical that entities such as the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority enjoy any constitutional rights at all, let alone qualify as ‘person(s)’ for purposes of the Fifth Amendment.”

Thomas added that the Fifth Amendment “was never understood to constrain Congress’s ability to extend federal jurisdiction.”

“The federal government has always possessed the power to extend its jurisdiction beyond the nation’s borders, and, as understood in 1791, the Fifth Amendment did not limit this sovereign prerogative,” he wrote.

Charles Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and deputy director of its Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of its national security law program, told JNS that the court’s decision was “pretty common sense.”

“I’m not the least bit surprised that the court came down the way it did. I’m not the least bit surprised that it was unanimous, and I’m not the least bit surprised that Thomas and Gorsuch wrote what they wrote in their concurrence,” he said. “I’m only surprised that Alito didn’t join them in that concurrence. That’s the only surprise of this case, because Alito takes a very hard stand on terrorism.”

The case is now remanded back to the Second Circuit. “This is a long way from being over,” Stimson told JNS.

The case is “very fact dependent,” and the District Court will conduct fact finding processes, and since this is a civil suit, there will be discovery and depositions, according to Stimson.

“Who knows if anyone from the PLO and PA will show up for those,” he told JNS. “There may be a default judgment” if they don’t show up in court, he added. “This is years if not decades away from being resolved.”

One can’t know where the case will go. “A trial is called a trial. It’s not a play,” he said. “You don’t know what the end is gonna be.” Still, Stimson said, the victims overcame a “first big hurdle” on Friday.

‘Wired differently’

The plaintiffs in Fuld v. Palestine Liberation included Miriam Fuld, on behalf of her husband Ari Fuld, who was killed by a Palestinian terrorist in 2018 in Judea and Samaria, and other U.S. victims of Palestinian terror attacks between 2002 and 2004.

“OK, so this is a big deal indeed. My late brother Ari’s wife appealed to the Supreme Court and won. Unanimously,” Hillel Fuld stated. “Now, any American citizen affected by Palestinian terror can sue the Palestinian Authority in American courts. Pretty unprecedented. Wow.”

Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS that “today’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling is a landmark victory for American victims of Palestinian terrorism—and for justice itself.”

The court’s decision “reaffirms their right to seek redress in U.S. courts and sets a precedent that those who carry out, support or enable acts of international terror can and will be held accountable—now and in the future.”

“Today’s unanimous decision is a victory for American citizens who fall victim to vicious acts of terrorism overseas,” stated the American Jewish Committee. “Allowing victims to pursue justice in U.S. courts provides a clear message to terrorists who kill or harm Americans that they will be held to account for their crimes.”

Agudath Israel of America told JNS that the court’s ruling “ensures that American victims of terrorism abroad will be able to seek justice in the United States, as Congress intended when passing the law.”

“My dear heroic friend, Ari Fuld, who was fatally knifed in the back by an evil monster, a Muslim Palestinian Arab terrorist, would have been proud and pleased by today’s Supreme Court decision,” Morton Klein, national president of Zionist Organization of America, told JNS.

“I’m likewise pleased that, in the case that Ari’s family brought on his behalf, after a long legal battle, the Supreme Court upheld jurisdiction over the PLO and Palestinian Authority, predicated on the PLO’s and PA’s heinous policy of spending $400 million a year to pay Arabs lifetime pensions to murder Jews,” he said.

“This case will go a long way towards vindicating the rights of murdered and wounded innocent Jews and Christians to sue the Arab-Islamic terrorists’ paymasters, and may help deter future terrorism,” Klein added.

Stimson told JNS that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday won’t deter terror groups from committing further terror acts

“My experience with terrorists, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 co-conspirators who I helped bring to Guantanamo in the fall 2006, is that the normal rules of common sense don’t apply to them,” he told JNS. “They don’t think the way we think.”

“If a Supreme Court in a far-off land says that an organization that helps sponsor them could be held civilly liable for acts of terrorism, you have to understand that these are ideologically driven nut jobs,” he told JNS.

“A normal person would not like to be sued for civil money damages, and it would act as a deterrent. That’s why we pay insurance, car insurance, homeowners insurance and we don’t engage in acts that could result in the loss of our home, our car, our bank account,” he said. “But terrorists don’t think like us, because they’re wired differently and they’re wacko.”

This article was originally published in JNS and can be viewed here.