WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that a federal law that allows torture victims to sue their overseas assailants does not permit suits against corporations or political groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The justices said the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 authorized lawsuits only against the people responsible for torture and killing.
“The text of the TVPA convinces us that Congress did not extend liability to organizations, sovereign or not,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the united court.
“There are no doubt valid arguments for such an extension. But Congress has seen fit to proceed in more modest steps in the act, and it is not the province of this branch to do otherwise.”
The legislation authorizes lawsuits in U.S. courts against “an individual” who “under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation” tortures a person or takes part in an “extrajudicial” killing.
The case before the court involves a lawsuit filed by the family of Palestinian-American Azzam Rahim. Rahim immigrated to the United States in the 1970s and returned to the West Bank in 1995. His family alleged that he was arrested by Palestinian Authority intelligence officers and then imprisoned, tortured and eventually killed in a Jericho prison.
Rahim’s survivors filed suit in 2005 against the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. A district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed the case, saying that only people can be sued under the language of the TVPA. But other lower courts have said such suits could proceed against corporations and other entities.
Human-rights organizations had argued that the law was “toothless” if suits were limited to individuals rather than entities that might have controlled the torture or killings.
Sotomayor acknowledged that might be true but wrote, “Congress appeared well aware of the limited nature of the cause of action it established in the act.”
