Republic of Austria v. Altmann
The Supreme Court ruled that a 1976 law stripping foreign governments of automatic immunity from U.S. lawsuits can be applied to conduct that happened decades earlier, including Austria's alleged World War II-era seizure of valuable paintings.
The decision let an elderly Holocaust survivor's niece pursue her lawsuit against Austria and its state museum to recover six Gustav Klimt paintings once owned by her family, rejecting Austria's argument that it should have kept the near-total immunity foreign states enjoyed back in 1948.
“But the principal purpose of foreign sovereign immunity has never been to permit foreign states and their instrumentalities to shape their conduct in reliance on the promise of future immunity from suit in United States courts.”
Explaining why the usual concern behind refusing retroactive application of laws doesn't fit sovereign immunity.
How it got here: A federal trial court and the Ninth Circuit rejected Austria's sovereign immunity defense; Austria and the gallery asked the Supreme Court to review whether the immunity law applied to pre-1976 conduct.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Maria Altmann, an elderly Austrian-born American citizen, sued Austria and its state art gallery to recover six Gustav Klimt paintings that had hung in her uncle Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's Vienna home before the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. She claimed the paintings were seized or extracted from her family through wrongful conduct during and after the war, and that the gallery falsely claimed they had been freely donated.
The question before the Court
Could an American woman sue Austria in U.S. court over Nazi-era art seizures, even though a law letting her sue foreign governments didn't exist until decades later?
Why it matters
Foreign governments and museums holding property connected to historical wrongdoing can now be sued in U.S. courts even when that wrongdoing predates the 1976 law, opening the door to more Nazi-era art restitution suits and other decades-old expropriation claims against foreign sovereigns.
What changes now
The case returns to the lower courts, where Altmann's underlying claims about the paintings' ownership can proceed. The Court left open Austria's separate 'act of state' defense and whether the law's specific property-taking exception actually covers this dispute, since it limited review to the retroactivity question. Years of further litigation and eventually arbitration followed before the paintings' fate was resolved outside this opinion.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Austria's alleged wrongdoing actually falls within the law's property-taking exception, nor did it address Austria's separate 'act of state' defense, which shields certain official government acts from being questioned in court regardless of sovereign immunity.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Scalia
Justice Scalia agreed with the result but explained his reasoning differently: because immunity statutes govern when courts may exercise judicial power rather than regulating how people behave, applying a new immunity rule to a case filed after the law's enactment is not truly 'retroactive,' even though the underlying conduct happened earlier. He rejected the dissent's reliance on Hughes Aircraft, arguing the immunity law does not create or modify substantive rights the way that statute did.
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with the majority but offered additional reasons: sovereign immunity has always turned on a defendant's status at the time of suit, not its conduct beforehand, so there was no real reliance interest for Austria to protect. He also argued that other doctrines, like statutes of limitations and the act-of-state doctrine, adequately guard against unfairly reviving very old claims.
Dissent — Justice Kennedy
“By today's decision the Court opens foreign nations worldwide to vast and potential liability for expropriation claims in regards to conduct that occurred generations ago, including claims that have been the subject of international negotiation and agreement.”Warning about the broad consequences of applying the immunity law to decades-old conduct.
Justice Kennedy argued the majority weakened the traditional presumption against applying new laws to old conduct without a clear statement from Congress, and that the immunity law's 'henceforth' language does not clearly command retroactive application. He argued the law created jurisdiction that didn't exist before for Austria's 1948 conduct, which under precedent should not apply retroactively, and he would have sent the case back for a historical inquiry into what immunity Austria could have expected in 1948.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the framework from Landgraf v. USI Film Products, which asks first whether Congress expressly stated how far back a law reaches, and if not, whether applying the law to old conduct would impair rights, increase liability, or impose new duties for past actions.
- The Court found the immunity law resists easy categorization under that framework: it does not create new duties or increase liability for Austria's past conduct, since foreign states never had an actual 'right' to immunity, only an expectation of the courts' discretionary comity.
- Because the Landgraf framework did not give a clear answer, the Court reasoned that the usual worry behind refusing to apply new laws retroactively - protecting people who relied on old rules when they acted - does not fit sovereign immunity, since foreign states have never shaped their conduct in reliance on a promise of future immunity from American courts.
- The Court concluded that foreign sovereign immunity has always depended on current political relationships and the courts' deference to the political branches' most recent decision on the subject, so it was more appropriate to apply the 1976 law now rather than to assume it does not apply merely because the underlying conduct happened earlier.
- Looking at the statute's own preamble, which says immunity claims should 'henceforth' be decided under its principles, and its broader structure - which already applies many provisions to older conduct - the Court found clear evidence Congress meant the law to cover claims based on conduct occurring before 1976.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Landgraf v. USI Film Products (511 U. S. 244)
The Court found this case's usual test for retroactivity does not clearly resolve sovereign immunity cases and applied it in a modified way.
Distinguishes Hughes Aircraft Co. v. United States ex rel. Schumer (520 U. S. 939)
The Court said this case, involving a statute that created new liability tied directly to a cause of action, differs from the immunity law here.