Posted on 02/21/25
| News Source: The Hill
Washington, D.C. - Feb. 21, 2025 - The Supreme Court unanimously sided with Hungary on Friday by rejecting a group of Holocaust survivors’ legal theory that sought to haul the country into American courts to pay compensation.
The court’s decision rebuffs the survivors’ claims that they are entitled to funds from the Hungarian treasury for the government and national railway confiscating their assets during World War II, which have been liquidated and “comingled” with general government funds in the decades since.
“The Court concludes that a commingling theory, without more, cannot satisfy the commercial nexus requirement,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, former President Obama’s first nominee to the court, wrote for the court.
Sotomayor sympathized with the U.S. government’s concerns about the lawsuit and agreed that allowing it to move forward could “undermine the United States’ foreign relations and reciprocal self-interest” and “conformity with international law.”
The battle over whether the survivors can pierce Hungary’s immunity as a foreign sovereign has extended for 14 years, reaching the Supreme Court twice.
The Holocaust survivors’ and their heirs cited an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that removes a foreign government’s immunity if the case involves property taken in violation of international law.
Sotomayor stressed the exception is merely a “limited departure” from the general rule that foreign sovereigns can’t be hauled into American courts, going on to rule that the survivors’ case didn’t meet the criteria.