Twenty-five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks shook the nation, cases brought by the victims’ families are still working their way through federal courts. But there have been some notable victories for plaintiffs, especially since Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act in 2016 to significantly narrow foreign sovereign immunity.
The law allows American victims of terrorism to sue foreign governments such as Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts. It amended the federal Anti-Terrorism Act to permit lawsuits against a government that “aids and abets” a foreign terrorist organization in carrying out a terrorist attack on U.S soil.
“Terrorism victims, particularly U.S. terrorism victims, are very sympathetic subjects of legislation. One can definitely get bipartisan support to help them,” says William Dodge, a George Washington University Law School professor and a founding editor of the Transnational Litigation Blog.
The law’s impact is definitely being felt in the courts. In August 2025, U.S. District Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York denied Saudi Arabia’s motion to dismiss claims arising from the 9/11 attacks.
He ruled the plaintiffs presented sufficient evidence to show that two Saudi officials provided direct assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers, including frequent meetings with them in Los Angeles and San Diego, and provided important logistical help.
Judge Daniels also found a reasonable inference that the two officials’ employment went beyond what their official job titles suggested, including whether one of them was truly employed as an “accountant” and the fact that he had a sketch of an airplane with numbers and calculations. As a result, the judge concluded the plaintiffs had shown the officials’ employment with Saudi Arabia had “some connection with assisting the hijackers.”
Three months later, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta allowed another lawsuit to go forward against Saudi Arabia over a deadly mass shooting in 2019 at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. A Royal Saudi Air Force flight student had opened fire, killing three U.S. service members and wounding 13 others. The Department of Justice later said the shooter had ties to al-Qaida.
The 11th Circuit ruled the claims brought by survivors and victims’ families were facially sufficient under the law and that Saudi Arabia had been “grossly negligent in vetting, hiring, and sending” the trainee to the U.S. And it rebuffed in part Saudi Arabia’s foreign sovereign immunity defense.
The original terrorism exception to foreign sovereign immunity predates 9/11. In 1996, Congress amended the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to allow an exception to immunity for lawsuits against designated state sponsors of terrorism. The seven countries on the list at that time included Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
But facing continued hurdles in the courts, plaintiffs went to Congress to expand the initial terrorism exception. In 2008, Congress created a new federal cause of action for injuries caused by acts of state-sponsored terrorism while also authorizing punitive damages under Section 1605A of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Congress enacted the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act in 2016 specifically to override decisions that precluded suits against Saudi Arabia because it had not been previously designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
John Bellinger III co-chairs the Global Law and Public Policy Group at Arnold & Porter and also served as a legal adviser to the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration.
The 2016 law was enacted over President Barack Obama’s veto, and Bellinger opposed it as well, expressing concerns at the time that it violated a core principle of international law. Speaking with the ABA Journal, Bellinger explained why.
“When we strip the immunity of foreign states or their officials or their embassies, we invite retaliation and make it more dangerous for the United States and our diplomats.”
Bellinger was in the Situation Room on Sept. 11, 2001, and says, “The very first legal question I had to answer on 9/11 was whether it would be an act of international terrorism for the president to order the shoot-down of the aircrafts coming in" to Washington, D.C.
Nonetheless, he calls the terrorism exception “unique,” saying it makes the U.S. an “outlier in the world” because sovereigns generally have immunity from suits in other countries unless they have waived it. And he believes it’s hardly far-fetched that other nations could take similar action.
“With the United States engaged in acts like the boat strikes in the Caribbean or even actions elsewhere that have killed civilians, other countries might consider those to be acts of international terrorism and could remove the immunity of the United States,” Bellinger says.
Maggie Gardner, a Cornell Law School professor of international law and civil procedure, agrees. She suggests that a company aiding the bombings of civilian vessels also may not be shielded.
Nonetheless, Gardner expects to see more cases in U.S. federal courts against Saudi Arabia and other alleged bad actors.
“Some of these plaintiffs are getting closer to major, major payouts,” she says. “These attorneys have been very diligent and determined.”
While the cases against Saudi Arabia clearly involve terrorist acts that occurred within the U.S., what happens when such acts occur outside our borders?
The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in last year with a unanimous ruling that sided with victims’ families in the long-running case Fuld v. Palestinian Liberation Organization, which involved terrorist acts in Israel that claimed the lives of U.S. nationals.
Family members sued the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority and in 2015 won a $218.5 million jury award in the Southern District of New York, trebled to $655.5 million. But the next year, the New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that award and dismissed the case for a lack of personal jurisdiction.
Congress responded with the Promoting Safety and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019, which deems the PLO and the Palestinian Authority to have consented to personal jurisdiction in civil suits brought in the U.S. if they engage in specified conduct under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
In reinstating the case, the Supreme Court ruled the government has a compelling interest in providing a forum for American victims to hold the perpetrators of overseas terror accountable for acts that harm U.S. citizens. In an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said American plaintiffs have a strong interest in seeking justice through ATA damages actions in U.S. courts.
“The Supreme Court blew the door open in Fuld to interpret U.S. extraterritorial interests very broadly,” Gardner says. “It is really a break with the sort of analysis the court had been doing previously with personal jurisdiction.”
Dodge says the ruling is not the last word in these cases. “Fuld has opened the door to broader personal jurisdiction, but Congress needs to walk through that door.”
In the opinion, the justices made clear that Congress cannot assert jurisdiction over anyone in the world for anything, finding there still must be some sort of connection to the United States.
Speaking generally of terrorism-related cases, Dodge concludes, “This is an incredibly complicated area of law.”
