25 years later, 9/11 families are still fighting to get their day in court

The families of 9/11 victims have been fighting for more than two decades for the right to sue the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its alleged role in the attacks. They may soon get their day in court — so long as a circuit court respects the will of Congress.

Not long after the attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives, a troubling set of facts emerged. A majority of the hijackers were Saudi nationals. Although the Saudi government has denied involvement and the 9/11 Commission found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior officials individually funded al Qaeda, the country had been a major backer of charities that supported extremist ideologies. And some Saudi government officials had apparent connections to some of the attackers.

When victims’ families began suing the kingdom in 2002, Saudi Arabia moved to have the claims dismissed based on the concept of sovereign immunity, which holds that a government may only be sued with its consent. Riyadh argued that a 1976 law — the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act — only allowed lawsuits to be filed against countries on the State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors.

In 2005, the federal district court agreed with Saudi Arabia, which wasn’t on the list. This prompted another decade of legal wrangling and uncertainty for the........

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