## Facts

- Maria V. Altmann, an Austrian-Jewish émigré and heir to Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, sought recovery of six Gustav Klimt paintings connected to Nazi-era taking and subsequent Austrian retention.
- The paintings ultimately were held by the Austrian Gallery (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere), an Austrian state museum.
- Altmann sued the Republic of Austria and the Austrian Gallery in federal district court, invoking jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA).
- She relied on the FSIA’s expropriation exception for “rights in property taken in violation of international law.”
- Austria moved to dismiss, asserting that it would have enjoyed absolute sovereign immunity when the relevant events occurred and that the FSIA did not remove that immunity for pre-1976 conduct.
- The district court and Ninth Circuit denied dismissal, holding that the FSIA applies to pre-1976 conduct; the Supreme Court granted review on that question.

## Issues

1. Whether the FSIA applies to actions filed after 1976 that are based on alleged conduct occurring before the FSIA’s enactment, including conduct predating the United States’ 1952 adoption of restrictive sovereign immunity.
2. Whether, if the FSIA applies, Austria’s immunity claim must be evaluated under the FSIA’s statutory standards rather than a pre-FSIA absolute-immunity regime.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the FSIA applies to conduct predating 1976, including conduct before 1952.
- The Court concluded that, in post-1976 civil actions against foreign states, immunity claims are to be decided under the FSIA’s standards regardless of when the underlying conduct occurred.
- The Court did not finally resolve whether the expropriation exception was satisfied on the merits; it held only that Austria was not entitled to dismissal based on an absolute-immunity rule tied to the time of the alleged taking.

## Legal Principles

- The FSIA supplies the governing legal standards for foreign sovereign immunity in U.S. courts in every civil action against a foreign state filed after the Act’s enactment, absent controlling international agreement.
- Applying the FSIA to suits based on pre-enactment conduct is permissible because the statute primarily allocates adjudicatory authority and sets rules for determining immunity, rather than attaching new substantive liability to past conduct.
- Foreign sovereign immunity is a doctrine grounded in comity and statute, not a constitutional entitlement; Congress may prescribe the standards courts must apply to immunity claims.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the FSIA controls sovereign-immunity determinations in post-1976 lawsuits even when the alleged conduct occurred decades earlier, allowing Altmann’s suit to proceed past Austria’s threshold immunity defense for adjudication under the FSIA framework.


Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004)