Court dissent discusses scope of immunity for international organizations under U.S. law

Cite as: 586 U.S. (2019) 11 BREYER, J., dissenting sity, included immunity from suit in commercial areas, since organizations were buying goods and making contracts in the United States. To achieve these purposes, Congress enacted legislation that granted necessarily broad immunity. And that fact strongly suggests that Congress would not have wanted the statute to reduce significantly the scope of immunity that international organizations enjoyed, particularly organizations engaged in development finance, refugee assistance, or other tasks that U.S. law could well decide were “commercial” in nature. See infra, at 12. To that extent, an examination of the statute’s purpose supports a static, not a dynamic, interpretation of its cross-reference to the immunity of foreign governments. Unlike the purpose of the Civil Rights Act, the purpose here was not to ensure parity of treatment for interna- tional organizations and foreign governments. Instead, as the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit pointed out years ago, the statute’s reference to the immunities of “foreign governments” was a “shorthand” for the immuni- ties those foreign governments enjoyed at the time the Act was passed. Atkinson v. Inter-American Development Bank, 156 F. 3d 1335, 1840, 1841 (1998). Il Now consider the consequences that the majority’s reading of the statute will likely produce—consequences that run counter to the statute’s basic purposes. Although the UN itself is no longer dependent upon the Immunities Act, many other organizations, such as the FAO and sev- eral multilateral development banks, continue to rely upon that Act to secure immunity, for the United States has never ratified treaties nor enacted statutes that might extend the necessary immunity, commercial and noncom- mercial alike. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028569