The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a setback to a bid by the heirs of Jewish art dealers to win restitution from Germany in American courts for what they called a coerced sale forced by the former Nazi government in 1935 of a collection of precious medieval religious art.
The justices in a 9-0 ruling decided that the lawsuit cannot proceed under a U.S. law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that limits the jurisdiction of American courts in claims against foreign governments.
While the justices decided that this law barred the claims that the heirs brought against a German agency that administers state museums, they directed lower courts to re-examine other arguments made in the case, meaning the lawsuit potentially could still proceed.
Jewish art dealers sold a collection of ecclesiastical relics known as the Welfenschatz, which is the subject of the case. The collection, dating primarily from the 11th to 15th centuries, includes gilded crosses and busts of saints. Pieces from the collection are on display at a museum in Berlin.
The heirs sued Germany and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees museums in Berlin, in 2015 in a U.S. federal court, seeking the collection’s return or $250 million.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the law does not cover what a foreign country does to property belonging to its citizens within its own borders.
“As a nation, we would be surprised – and might even initiate reciprocal action – if a court in Germany adjudicated claims by Americans that they were entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars because of human rights violations committed by the United States government years ago,” Roberts wrote.
“There is no reason to anticipate that Germany’s reaction would be any different were American courts to exercise the jurisdiction claimed in this case,” Roberts added.
The ruling has set off a flurry of lawsuits in the courts across the country.
Despite worries from some U.S. museums and European parties that it goes too far in eliminating legal defenses that courts have used to decide previous claims, legislation to make recovering Nazi-looted art easier for the heirs of victims was approved by the House of Representatives on Monday.
The bill would extend the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
The purpose of that law was to deal with situations in which museums used the statute of limitations to block claims. It extended the time for heirs of Nazi theft victims to make a claim by up to six years following the discovery or identification of a stolen piece of art.
However, even after the 2016 law was passed, courts occasionally found that the current owners of contested artworks, including large museums, had been unfairly prevented from mounting strong defenses by the passage of so many decades.
The new bill, which the Senate unanimously approved in December, would help claimants by eliminating these time-related defenses.
President Trump will now review the bill. A spokesman for the White House declined to comment.
Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, are the sponsors of the Senate bill. Eight senators who are in favor of the bill claimed in a joint statement that certain museums, governments, and organizations had “chosen to entrench and litigate, effectively preserving possession of stolen works,” making the amendments necessary.
Jewish and Holocaust survivors’ organizations strongly support the efforts to make the law stronger. Described as a matter of fairness, the Association of Art Museum Directors funded a lobbying effort to try to maintain some of the current defenses related to the passage of time.
The legislation may also impact international disputes over claims of looted art.
Because U.S. law primarily treats foreign governments as immune from being sued in the United States, U.S. courts have frequently avoided getting involved in such cases.
Cases where a claim is founded on a “violation of international law” are exempt from the law.
Congress passed a bill that asserts that sovereign immunity should not protect Nazi art seizures, as they breach international law.