WASHINGTON: The US 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 occupied 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 Organisation to due process under the US constitution.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the ruling, said the 2019 jurisdictional law comported with due process rights enshrined in the constitution’s fifth amendment.

“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 compensation under a federal law.

The US 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.

Published in Dawn, June 21th, 2025