Justices Limit Judiciary’s Role in Holocaust-Related Suits (1)

Supreme Court justices took a narrow view of when suits involving property stolen from Holocaust victims belong in US courts.

In an unanimous ruling on Friday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act generally prohibits plaintiffs from bringing other countries and their agencies into American courts. Though there are exceptions, the justices said the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit read too broadly the so-called expropriation exception. That exception allows suits in which there’s a sufficient connection between property taken and commercial activity in the US.

However, Sotomayor wrote the survivors couldn’t meet the exception under ...