Chicago – A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected most claims by slave descendants that they deserve reparations from some of the nation’s biggest insurers, banks and transportation companies.
The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower-court ruling that slave descendants have no standing to sue for reparations based on injustices suffered by ancestors and that the statute of limitations ran out more than a century ago.
But the panel did keep alive a smaller portion of the suit, claiming that major U.S. corporations may be guilty of consumer fraud if they hid past ties to slavery from their customers.
The lawsuit was a consolidation of 10 suits filed around the country. Slave descendants claim that big American corporations – including such giants as JP Morgan Chase & Co., Aetna Inc. and Bank of America – profited from slavery and should pay. The lawsuit says the companies insured and transported slaves and even issued loans to slaveholders so they could buy slaves.
