Docket 23-1201
CC/Devas (Mauritius) Ltd. v. Antrix Corp.
DecidedJun 5, 2025
9-0decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court rules foreign governments can be sued in U.S. courts without proving local ties beyond existing law
Impact5/10
What it does
The Court held that under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), personal jurisdiction over a foreign government is established automatically once two conditions are met: (1) one of the Act's listed immunity exceptions applies, and (2) the foreign government has been properly served with legal process. No separate "minimum contacts" analysis — the traditional due-process test used in ordinary civil cases — is required on top of those two conditions. This resolves a split in how federal courts had been applying the FSIA and restores the straightforward two-step framework Congress wrote into the statute.
Who benefits
Parties — such as private companies and investors — who have won arbitration awards or other judgments against foreign government-owned entities and seek to confirm or enforce those awards in U.S. federal courts. Plaintiffs who previously could not establish "minimum contacts" in the Ninth Circuit despite satisfying every requirement the FSIA text actually lists.
Who is affected
Foreign government-owned companies and state instrumentalities that conduct business internationally and may now be subject to U.S. court jurisdiction whenever an FSIA immunity exception is satisfied, even if their direct ties to the United States are limited.
Practical impact
Plaintiffs who have obtained arbitration awards or other judgments against foreign government entities can now seek confirmation and enforcement in U.S. federal courts without having to separately prove that the foreign entity had sufficient ties to the United States under the International Shoe minimum-contacts standard. The Ninth Circuit's longstanding contrary rule — which had blocked enforcement of a $1.29 billion arbitration award in this case — is overturned, and the case is sent back to the lower courts to address remaining questions (including whether the Fifth Amendment independently requires minimum contacts and whether the arbitration exception properly applies here).
Majority — Alito
Joined by: Roberts, Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Jackson
The majority held that the plain text of FSIA § 1330(b) sets out exactly two requirements for personal jurisdiction — an applicable immunity exception and proper service — and that when both are met, the statute says jurisdiction "shall exist," leaving no room for courts to add a third requirement. The Court reasoned that the word "shall" makes jurisdiction automatic and that courts should not read in conditions Congress chose not to include, especially in a statute designed to "clarify the governing standards." The majority also found that the FSIA's immunity exceptions themselves already require varying degrees of connection between the lawsuit and the United States, so the statute is not ignoring the concern about domestic contacts — it addresses that concern through the exceptions, not through a separate minimum-contacts test. The Act's overall structure reinforces this: Congress deliberately linked immunity and jurisdiction together so that whenever an exception strips immunity, jurisdiction follows, and reading an extra requirement into only the jurisdiction side of that linked system would create an unintended gap. Finally, the Court examined the legislative history the Ninth Circuit relied on and found it actually supports the majority's reading — Congress believed the immunity exceptions themselves satisfy due-process contact requirements, not that § 1330(b) silently contains an independent minimum-contacts rule.
Constitutional question
Does the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act require a plaintiff to prove that a foreign government had "minimum contacts" with the United States — beyond what the Act's own immunity exceptions already require — before a U.S. court can exercise personal jurisdiction over that foreign government?
Precedent changed
The ruling effectively overturns the Ninth Circuit's 1980 precedent in Thos. P. Gonzalez Corp. v. Consejo Nacional de Produccion de Costa Rica, 614 F.2d 1247, which had read a minimum-contacts requirement into FSIA § 1330(b). No Supreme Court precedent is overruled.