Aviation & General Insurance Company, Ltd., et al. v. United States

In 1998 and 2006, Petitioners, U.S. and foreign insurers, filed suit against Libya in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C § 1602, et seq., seeking compensation for property losses incurred during acts of Libyan terrorism. In 2008 the United States terminated those claims—and all other terrorism claims against Libya—in exchange for a $1.5 billion payment from Libya. With those proceeds, the United States funded a public reparations program for individual victims of terrorism, to the exclusion of Petitioners and all other insurers. The question presented is:

1. Whether the Federal Circuit erred in finding that Petitioners’ takings claims presented a nonjusticiable political question despite this Court’s instruction in Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 U.S. 654 (1981) that there is “no jurisdictional obstacle” to the Federal Circuit reviewing whether a foreign claims settlement provided “reasonable, certain and adequate provision for obtaining compensation.”

2. Whether, in light of this Court’s repeated emphasis on the distribution of regulatory burden, see, e.g., Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc., 544 U.S. 528 (2005), the funding of a reparations program through the sale of Petitioners’ claims, and the subsequent exclusion of Petitioners from that program, constitutes a taking without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment.