Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied an emergency request to pause a $655.5 million civil judgment against the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority. The August 3 decision matters because the judgment remains unpaused while the organizations prepare a possible Supreme Court appeal.
Key Facts
- Supreme Court: Justice Sotomayor denied emergency application No. 26A141 on August 3, 2026.
- Relief requested: The PLO and Palestinian Authority sought to stop enforcement of the judgment during further Supreme Court proceedings.
- Amount: The official judgment is $655.5 million, commonly rounded to $656 million.
- Procedural status: The denial refused a temporary pause and did not decide the planned appeal.
What Sotomayor decided
The Supreme Court docket says the application was submitted to Sotomayor on July 27 and docketed July 30. It records that she denied the application on August 3.
The filing asked Sotomayor to stay enforcement of the Southern District of New York judgment. A stay is a court order that temporarily stops a ruling from being enforced.
The organizations requested that pause through the filing and resolution of a planned petition for a writ of certiorari. That petition would ask the Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision.
Sotomayor’s denial did not grant or deny that planned petition. It also did not issue a new ruling on the organizations’ civil liability.
The parties’ positions
The PLO and Palestinian Authority argued that immediate enforcement could disrupt security, education and other government services in the West Bank. They also asserted that enforcement could harm Palestinian civilians and regional security.
Those statements were arguments in their emergency filing, not findings made by Sotomayor. The docket records the denial without explaining her reasoning.
The civil plaintiffs hold the judgment that the organizations sought to pause. The applicants said the plaintiffs planned to pursue Palestinian Authority revenues collected by Israel to enforce it.
The United States also appears as a respondent in the application because it intervened earlier to defend the federal jurisdiction law. The emergency filing does not attribute a position on the requested stay to the United States.
How the judgment reached this point
The dispute began with a 2004 civil lawsuit in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs included Americans injured in attacks in Israel, along with estates and surviving family members.
After a 2015 trial, a jury found the PLO and Palestinian Authority civilly liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The jury awarded $218.5 million, which the law tripled to $655.5 million.
The Second Circuit vacated the judgment in 2016 because the federal courts lacked personal jurisdiction over the defendants. Personal jurisdiction is a court’s legal authority over a party in a case.
Congress later enacted a law creating specified grounds for federal jurisdiction over the two organizations. In 2025, the Supreme Court held that the law’s jurisdiction provision did not violate the Fifth Amendment.
On March 30, 2026, the Second Circuit recalled its earlier mandate and affirmed the district court judgment. The PLO and Palestinian Authority then asked the Supreme Court to stop enforcement while they sought further review.
What happens next
The August 3 denial leaves the requested pause unavailable. It does not establish that the judgment has been paid, collected or executed.
The application described a Supreme Court review petition as forthcoming. Any later action on such a petition would be separate from Sotomayor’s emergency decision.
