A Jenner & Block team led by Partners Jason Hipp, Todd C. Toral, and Brent Caslin were named as Runners-Up for Litigators of the Week by The American Lawyer for securing an important victory for Yazidi-American survivors of genocide. The US District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that plaintiffs have a right to sue under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1992 (ATA) if they hold US citizenship at the time of suit, establishing a clear right to seek relief for terror victims.
The Eastern District of New York’s ruling in Nadia Murad et al. v. Lafarge marks the first time a court has decided this specific and enormously consequential statutory interpretation of the 1992 law in a litigated posture. Had the court ruled otherwise, the Yazidi Nobel laureate Nadia Murad, along with hundreds of the 871 plaintiffs in this case, all Yazidi-Americans, could have had their claims dismissed entirely.
The Court denied in part defendants’ motion to dismiss that sought to strip hundreds of Yazidi-American genocide survivors of their claims based on technical arguments related to the timing of their citizenship acquisition. The ramifications of this decision extend far beyond Murad v. Lafarge, establishing precedent for other US citizens affected by terrorism to pursue their claims and the broad relief available under the ATA.
The ruling comes after US citizens from the Yazidi community, a religious minority originating in and around Iraq, filed a civil suit in December 2023 seeking damages against French corporation Lafarge S.A. for financing the Islamic State (ISIS), a transnational terrorist group, even as it committed terrorist attacks on Yazidi villages in Iraq in August 2014.
This victory follows Jenner’s representation in Schansman v. Sberbank, where the Second Circuit ruled in February 2025 that state-owned entities may be sued under the ATA—a decision the US Supreme Court declined to reconsider in October 2025.
The Jenner team worked alongside Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, and co-counsel Amal Clooney and her team including Alisha Mathew.
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