WASHINGTON — A unanimous Supreme Court on Friday dealt a severe blow to Holocaust survivors and their families in a long-running lawsuit seeking compensation from Hungary for property confiscated during World War II.
The justices threw out an appeals court ruling that had allowed the lawsuit to continue despite a federal law that generally shields sovereign nations like Hungary from suits in U.S. courts.
The high court heard arguments in December in Hungary’s latest bid to end the lawsuit filed in 2010 by survivors, all of whom are now over 90, and heirs of survivors. Some survived being sent to the Auschwitz death camp in what was German-occupied Poland.
The appeals court had held that the survivors satisfied the exception the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act makes for “property taken in violation of international law.” To qualify, the survivors must be able to show that the property has some commercial tie to the United States.
The survivors had argued that Hungary long ago sold off the property, mixed the proceeds with its general funds, and used that commingled money to issue bonds and buy military equipment in the U.S. in the 2000s.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court, said that “a commingling theory, without more” doesn’t satisfy the law’s requirements.
The court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but it’s unclear how much is left of the lawsuit.
The case had been to the Supreme Court before.
In 2021, the justices sided with Germany in a multimillion-dollar dispute over a collection of religious artworks known as the Guelph Treasure. That decision made it harder for some lawsuits to be tried in U.S. courts over claims that property was taken from Jews during the Nazi era.
The justices heard the Hungary case at the same time and returned it to the appeals court in Washington in light of the decision involving Germany.
The appeals court, hearing the case for a third time, refused to dismiss all the claims.
The survivors filed the lawsuit with the goal of pursuing a class action case against Hungary and its railway on behalf of all Hungarian Holocaust survivors and family members of Holocaust victims. The railroad played a key role in the genocide, transporting more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz over two months in 1944.
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