The Supreme Court will, on April 1, consider whether American victims of Palestinian terror attacks should be allowed to sue the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority for damages related to the organizations’ “pay for slay” program that rewards those who carry out attacks in Israel. 

The cases, one brought by a group of victims and family members, Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization, and the other, from the Justice Department, U.S. v. Palestine Liberation Organization, will be heard jointly by the court. The lawsuits follow a years-long legal battle between Congress and the courts over whether the PLO and the PA can be held accountable for providing a monetary incentive for terror attacks. 

For one of the plaintiffs, Hillel Fuld, whose American-Israeli brother, Ari, was stabbed to death in 2018 by a Palestinian terrorist in the West Bank, the case offers symbolic significance. 

“As my mother says, we’d rather not have this money,” he tells the Sun. “What’s more important than the money is the symbolism of them having to pay us. It’s the very fact that our enemies will finally be held accountable.” 

In 2018, the year of Fuld’s slaying, the PA reportedly budgeted 1.2 billion shekels to fund its “pay for slay” program. The family of Fuld’s murderer reportedly received a monthly salary of 1,400 shekels for three years following the attack. 

Mr. Fuld views it as “comical” that the Fatah — the largest faction of the PA — is seen by some as “this moderate, peace loving organization,” he tells the Sun. “They’re Hamas with a tie and with a suit — that’s the only difference.” 

The Supreme Court will review a 2024 appellate decision to strike down the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which was passed by Congress in 2019 that allowed terror victims to sue the PLO and PA for damages in American courts based on the determination that the courts had jurisdiction over the defendants. 

The legislation was proposed by Congress after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a 2015 jury ruling that deemed the PLO and PA liable for a series of terror attacks in Israel and granted American families of terror attack victims $655 million in damages. The plaintiffs sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which was enacted in 1992 to let American victims of international terror sue in American courts. However, the appeals court argued that the lower court had erroneously claimed jurisdiction over the Palestinian defendants. 

The legality of the 2019 measure hinges on the same question — whether the PLO and PA have consented to American jurisdiction. Congress argued that consent was considered granted if the organization provided the terrorist with a monetary reward or if the organization conducted any recent activity within America. 

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, however, ruled in 2024 that statute violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment because the PLO and PA lack sufficient ties to America to subject them to the jurisdiction of American courts. “Congress cannot, by legislative fiat, simply ‘deem’ activities to be ‘consent’ when the activities themselves cannot plausibly be construed as such,” the Second Circuit argued. 

The case regained momentum in August 2024 when the Biden administration’s Department of Justice petitioned the Supreme Court to review the appellate court’s decision, suggesting that the ruling failed to acknowledge the government’s interest in deterring terrorism abroad. 

In Febuary, a group of 17 prominent Jewish, pro-Israel, and civil rights groups filed an amicus brief with a similar request. “American citizenship has many benefits. One of them is the obligation of the government to protect its citizens when they are abroad,” said Marc Stern, the chief legal officer of AJC, one of the organizations behind the petition. “Our brief argues that there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits Congress from allowing American victims of terror abroad to sue their attackers in U.S. courts.”

The House of Representatives also filed a friend-of-the-court brief,  arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision “will affect Congress’s ability to enforce any federal statute beyond the borders of the United States.” The authors contend that upholding the Second Circuit’s decision would “substantially” diminish Congress’s “authority to legislate extraterritorially to advance our nation’s interests,” and result in “consequences rippling throughout the U.S. Code.” The brief was authorized by both the Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Democrat Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries. 

Lawyers for the PLO and the PA responded to the effort by saying that both defendants have, for more than a decade, “consistently objected” to being called before American courts.