Will the Supreme Court Side With the Taliban Over 9/11 Families?

Families of 9/11 victims want the Supreme Court to intervene and ensure the release of billions of dollars they are owed by the Taliban. The families won in federal court a $7 billion judgment against the Taliban. The judgment matches the amount of frozen Afghan central bank assets held at the New York Fed. Yet the Second United States Appeals Circuit blocked the money’s release, in part due to immunity questions relating to Afghanistan’s former government.The 9/11 families are asking for the release of $3.5 billion of the frozen funds, in light of President Biden having already given away the other $3.5 billion for his so-called “Afghan Fund.” Federal courts have so far rejected the families’ requests. The families are asking the high court to review what they call “an important but erroneous Second Circuit decision” that, lawyers for the families contend, “denies relief to thousands of victims of terrorist attacks.”A panel of circuit riders in December 2025 held that the central bank was an arm of “the foreign state of Afghanistan, which itself continues to be recognized as an independent state by the Executive Branch of the United States.” That, the panel determined, meant that the bank was immune from litigation under a federal law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Lawyers for the 9/11 families disagree with this conclusion.In the families’ telling, the central bank is more accurately viewed as “an instrumentality of the Taliban,” which the families point out is “a specially designated global terrorist organization.” The legitimate government at Kabul was in effect hijacked by the Taliban, turning the country into an incubator for terrorism. The circuit panel included Judges Guido Calabresi and Jose Cabranes, both Clinton nominees, and Richard Sullivan, a Trump nominee. The circuit riders also questioned the timing of the lower court judgment in favor of the 9/11 families. The panel found no evidence for the argument that the central bank “was an agency or instrumentality of the Taliban” at the time the funds were blocked in August 2021. The 9/11 families argue this finding breaches the legal requirement “that the blocked assets of terrorist entities shall be available to satisfy judgments held by terror victims.”Judge Steven Menashi of the Second Circuit appeared more amenable to the arguments of the 9/11 families. Judge Menashi in March dissented from the full circuit’s decision not to rehear the case following the circuit panel’s ruling against the families. He argued that the dispute warranted being reheard because legal decisions over “sovereign immunity and the execution of judgments must reflect current political realities.” Viewed through that lens, Judge Menashi says, the central bank “is an instrumentality of the Taliban rather than the State of Afghanistan.” That, the high court could find, would lend credence to arguments that the frozen funds are eligible to be turned over to the 9/11 families. The Nine recently reversed the Second Circuit in Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization. In any event, what a shock that a generation after 9/11 the case is still open.

Will the Supreme Court Side With the Taliban Over 9/11 Families?

Will the Supreme Court Side With the Taliban Over 9/11 Families?

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