Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority
The Court ruled that the Torture Victim Protection Act only allows lawsuits against human beings, not organizations, so the relatives of a man allegedly tortured and killed by Palestinian Authority officers could not sue the Palestinian Authority or the PLO under this law.
The decision closes off a route some torture victims' families had hoped to use to hold governments-in-exile, militant groups, and other organizations financially accountable, leaving them to pursue individual officers instead.
How it got here: A federal trial court dismissed the suit and the D.C. Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court agreed to hear it to resolve a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Azzam Rahim, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was allegedly arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Palestinian Authority intelligence officers while visiting the West Bank in 1995. His relatives sued the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization under a federal law allowing suits against "an individual" for torture and extrajudicial killing committed under a foreign government's authority.
The question before the Court
Can relatives of a torture victim sue an organization like the Palestinian Authority under a federal law that lets people sue "an individual" for torture and killing abroad?
Why it matters
Victims of torture and extrajudicial killing abroad, and their families, cannot use this particular federal law to sue the organizations behind the abuse — only the individual perpetrators. Because those individuals are often hard to find, sue, or collect money from, this ruling narrows a legal tool that human rights lawyers had used or hoped to use against organizations like foreign governments, militias, or political groups.
What changes now
The ruling is final on the merits and affirms the dismissal of the lawsuit against the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. The families cannot revive their claims against these organizations under this particular law, though the decision does not address whether they could pursue individual officers or use other legal theories. The ruling also resolves a split among federal appeals courts on this exact question.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the underlying allegations against the Palestinian Authority were true, whether the acts were committed under color of a foreign nation's law (an issue neither lower court addressed), or whether other statutes like the Alien Tort Statute allow suits against organizations.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with the outcome but disagreed that the word 'individual' alone settles the question, since he thought the term could linguistically include corporations and other entities. He found the law's drafting history — where a bill sponsor explicitly changed 'person' to 'individual' to exclude corporations — decisive in confirming the majority's reading.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court began with the ordinary, everyday meaning of the word 'individual,' which in normal English usage and in the Court's own prior opinions refers to a human being, not an organization or corporation.
- The Court looked at how Congress uses the word elsewhere: a separate federal law, the Dictionary Act, defines 'person' to include corporations and other entities 'as well as individuals,' showing Congress treats 'individual' as a category distinct from organizations.
- Applying the rule that words carry the same meaning throughout a statute, the Court noted the law uses 'individual' five times in one sentence — once for the wrongdoer and four times for the victim — and only a human being can be a torture victim, so all five uses must mean a natural person.
- The Court also noted that the same law separately uses the broader word 'person' when describing who can bring a wrongful-death claim, showing Congress deliberately chose a narrower word, 'individual,' for who can be sued.
- The Court rejected the families' argument that Congress must have intended to allow suits against organizations because such suits are common under other tort laws and in other countries, holding that this general practice cannot override clear statutory text.
- Having found no signal in the text, structure, or drafting history that Congress meant something broader than 'human being,' the Court concluded that the law creates a legal claim against natural persons only, not organizations.