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The Supreme Court upheld Congress and President Obama Wednesday in …
Richard Wolf, USA TODAY The 6-2 ruling by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a victory for victims and their surviving family members, who had sought access to some $2 billion in assets controlled by Iran in a U.S. bank.
The court determined that a law passed by Congress did not dictate to the courts how to handle the dispute, as the Iranian challengers had claimed. The justices also said the Constitution gives the president and Congress broad powers to conduct foreign policy.
"Exercise by Congress and the president of control over claims against foreign governments, as well as foreign government-owned property in the United States, is hardly a novelty," Ginsburg said in summarizing her 24-page opinion from the bench.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented. He said the narrowly crafted congressional statute, which specified that hundreds of plaintiffs should gain access to the money, sought to dictate the result of the case.
"No less than if it had passed a law saying 'respondents win,' Congress has decided this case by enacting a bespoke statute tailored to this case that resolves the parties' specific legal disputes to guarantee respondents victory," Roberts said.
But during oral argument, a majority of justices noted that Congress frequently passes laws with individualized effects, such as providing funds for a particular bridge or helping a specific person.
"You think the issue here is the protection of the judiciary, rather than providing a certain element of equal treatment for the people who are the litigants in the case?" Justice Samuel Alito asked Jeffrey Lamken, the lawyer representing Iran's central bank. "I would think it would be the opposite."
The case brought back to life the deadliest act of terrorism against American citizens prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — the pre-dawn truck bombing of the Marine Corps barracks by Hezbollah, which courts later determined came at Iran's direction.
The lengthy effort to collect damages from Iran involved other terrorist attacks, including the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 service members and the 2001 suicide bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed a New Jersey woman and 14 others. But the Beirut bombing was the case's central feature.
Among those who waged a nearly 15-year legal battle for compensation were relatives of 173 of the 241 service members killed in the 1983 bombing, as well as the lucky few who survived.
The lead plaintiff was Deborah Peterson, whose brother, Lance Cpl. James Knipple, was killed in Beirut. She filed the wrongful-death case in 2001 — a month after the 9/11 attacks.
If that was allowed, Lamken had argued, the lesson would be "if you want to win your case in court, don't hire a lawyer — hire a lobbyist."
But lawyers for 19 groups of victims, representing more than 1,000 claims for damages, argued that it's legal for Congress to pass laws affecting ongoing litigation. The Supreme Court, they said, has upheld laws aimed at court action concerning particular bridges and forests; on matters of foreign relations, the power is all the more important.
"This is the power of the president and Congress, working together," said Theodore Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general representing the largest group of victims. "Congress passed the statute. The president signed the statute. The president blocked the assets."
Regardless of the high court's decision, 68 families or representatives of Beirut victims won't collect any money because they are not involved in the case. Some of them have initiated separate court actions, indicating the effort to get Iran to pay up will continue for years to come.
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