Transparency & Accountability
Sotomayor refused to freeze the $655 million judgment against the PA
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The emergency application this paper reported at the opening of its litigation docket has been answered, and the answer was one word long.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied it on Monday 4 August, without referring the matter to the full Supreme Court and without giving reasons. The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization had asked her to pause enforcement of a judgment of $655.5 million while they prepare to ask the court to review it. Enforcement may now proceed.
The plaintiffs are Americans wounded in attacks in and around Jerusalem between 2002 and 2004, and the families of Americans killed in them. They won at trial in New York in 2015.
The judgment was thrown out in 2016 for want of jurisdiction, then revived after the Supreme Court upheld the Promoting Security and Justice for Terrorism Victims Act in June 2025. The Second Circuit reinstated it in full on 31 March this year, without ordering a new trial.
What the Authority argued, and what it faces#
In its filing the Authority made two claims. The first was legal: that no American court had previously held that a money judgment entered without jurisdiction may be resurrected years after every appeal was exhausted. The second was fiscal — that paying would destabilise the services it still delivers to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Neither was tested by Monday's order. A denied stay decides nothing about the merits, and a petition for review can still follow.
The collection route is the part that reaches ordinary Palestinians fastest. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have said they intend to pursue the tax and customs revenue Israel collects on the Authority's behalf, including the sums Israel already withholds over payments to prisoners and to the families of attackers.
That is the same clearance pipeline that pays teachers, nurses and municipal staff, and it is already delivering partial salaries.
The Authority has not said publicly how it will answer a collection order against those funds. Times of Palestine will follow the docket to its end, in both languages.
