Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority, 132 S.Ct. 1702 (2012). When Justice Alito spoke at the last Third Circuit Conference, he said that most of the Supreme Court’s work does not deal with constitutional issues. Rather, most cases involve statutory interpretation. Some of those cases are easier than others. This case was one of those.
Plaintiffs’ decedent visited the West Bank, where he was allegedly arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually killed by the Palestinian Authority. Plaintiffs sued the Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization (“PLO”) under the Torture Victims Protection Act (“TVPA”).
The TVPA authorizes a cause of action against “an individual” for torture or killings committed under the authority or the color of law of a foreign nation. The district court dismissed the complaint on the grounds that “individual,” as used in the TVPA, encompassed only natural persons, not organizations. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court of the United States granted review.
Plaintiffs conceded that governmental entities were not covered by “individual.” But they contended that “individual” included “natural persons and nonsovereign organizations,” such as the Authority and the PLO. The Supreme Court disagreed and affirmed the decisions below. Writing for the Court, Justice Sotomayor held that the TVPA “authorizes suit against natural persons alone.”
The ordinary meaning of “individual,” in common parlance, is “natural person.” There was no indication that Congress intended to attribute any other meaning in the TVPA, though Congress had the right to do that had it so chosen. Justice Sotomayor noted that many federal statutes routinely differentiate between individuals and organizations. For all those reasons, and others, “individual” did not include organizations. Justice Sotomayor rejected plaintiffs’ argument that “individual” referred to any “oneness,” whether a single person or a unified organization.
Plaintiffs also cited legislative history of the TVPA, but Justice Sotomayor concluded that the statutory language was clear enough that no recourse to legislative history was necessary. Regardless, she found that the legislative history did not support plaintiffs.
Finally, plaintiffs argued that limiting “individual” to natural persons made the TVPA “toothless,” since individual defendants are likely to be judgment-proof and organizations would be excluded. Justice Sotomayor regarded that simply as the structure that Congress knowingly chose to impose. “The text of the TVPA convinces us that Congress did not extend liability to organizations, sovereign or not. There are no doubt valid arguments for such an extension. But Congress has seen fit to proceed in more modest steps in the [TVPA], and it is not the province of this Branch to do otherwise.”
The issue of the legislative history created some minor division. Justice Breyer filed a concurring opinion, stating that, to him, the plain meaning of “individual” did not resolve the issue, but that the legislative history led him to agree with the result. Justice Scalia did not join that portion of Justice Sotomayor’s opinion that relied on the legislative history.