## Facts

- The United Nations (U.N.) is headquartered in New York pursuant to the Agreement Between the United States and the United Nations Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations (the Headquarters Agreement).
- The Headquarters Agreement contemplates that the U.N. may invite governments and organizations to participate in U.N. work at its New York headquarters and addresses access and presence for those invitees.
- The U.N. invited the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to participate at U.N. headquarters in New York as a Permanent Observer, and the PLO maintained a mission in New York in connection with that status.
- In 1987, Congress enacted the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 (ATA), aimed at expelling the PLO from the United States and making it unlawful, with limited exceptions, to establish or maintain a PLO office or facility in the United States.
- After the ATA’s enactment, the United States filed suit in the Southern District of New York seeking injunctive relief requiring the PLO and its Mission to the United Nations to close and to cease operating in the United States.
- The PLO opposed the requested injunction and sought dismissal, arguing that applying the ATA to the PLO’s U.N. observer mission would conflict with the Headquarters Agreement, which the PLO asserted protected its ability to be present for U.N. purposes.

## Issues

1. Whether the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 required the closure of the PLO’s Mission to the United Nations in New York.
2. Whether the ATA should be interpreted, if fairly possible, to avoid conflict with the U.S. treaty obligations under the Headquarters Agreement.
3. Whether Congress clearly expressed an intent to abrogate or override the Headquarters Agreement as to the PLO’s U.N. observer mission.

## Decision

- The court denied the United States’ request for an injunction to close the PLO’s Mission to the United Nations in New York.
- The court held that the Headquarters Agreement is a treaty and part of the “supreme Law of the Land,” and that courts should reconcile statutes and treaties where possible.
- The court concluded that Congress did not clearly state an intent in the ATA to repudiate or breach the Headquarters Agreement.
- Reading the ATA in harmony with the Headquarters Agreement, the court construed the ATA not to require closing the PLO’s office to the extent it functioned as the PLO’s Permanent Observer Mission to the U.N.

## Legal Principles

- Treaties and federal statutes have equal domestic status under the Supremacy Clause, and courts should construe them to coexist where a fair reading permits.
- Repeal or abrogation of a treaty by later statute is disfavored absent a clear statement or unmistakable congressional intent.
- The last-in-time rule applies only when a statute and a treaty are truly irreconcilable; where reconciliation is reasonably available, courts adopt that construction.
- Executive-branch interpretations of treaty obligations and related foreign-affairs consequences are entitled to significant weight in construing domestic law and treaty meaning.

## Conclusion

The Southern District of New York held that the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 could not be applied to compel closure of the PLO’s Mission to the United Nations because the United States’ Headquarters Agreement obligations remained in force and Congress did not clearly direct abrogation; accordingly, the court construed the ATA narrowly to avoid a treaty conflict and denied the government’s requested injunction.


United States of America v. The Palestine Liberation Organization, et al., 695 F. Supp. 1456 (1988)