US senators consider easing law so Americans can sue China over coronavirus
- Neither party shied away from condemning Beijing, but Democrats saved some of their harshest criticism for Donald Trump and his handling of the pandemic
- Current US law prevents Americans from filing suit against foreign governments, with a narrow list of exceptions
US lawmakers debated whether to make it easier for Americans to sue China for damages related to the coronavirus pandemic at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday in Washington.
“At what point in time do we need to put on the table new ideas to stop a recurring event: pandemics coming from China?” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the committee. “Given the wilfulness, the deceit and the hard-heartedness, for lack of a better word, regarding the Chinese Communist Party’s handling of the coronavirus, I think now the time has come for us to put on the table new tools to deal with an old problem.”
“I cannot think of a more compelling idea than to allow individual Americans or groups of Americans to bring lawsuits against the culprit Chinese government for the damage done to their family, to our economy and to the psyche of the nation,” Graham added.
Senators from both parties expressed anger toward China for allowing what had been a local outbreak of a new virus to swell – because of censorship and negligence, they said – into a global pandemic that has now killed nearly half a million people.
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More than 120,000 of those deaths have been in the US. China’s official death toll has not reached 5,000.
“I understand the committee’s interest in looking at questions around foreign sovereign immunity, and China’s failures relating to the coronavirus pandemic,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee. “But we also need to take a careful look at what our government could and should have been doing. Was it better?”
Tuesday’s hearing – “The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Coronavirus, and Addressing China’s Culpability” – focused on a 1976 law that mostly prevents Americans from suing foreign governments. The law has a narrow list of exceptions.
China considers retaliation for US coronavirus lawsuits
Two states – Missouri and Mississippi – have initiated lawsuits against China on behalf of their residents. The Mississippi attorney general, Lynn Fitch, testified at Tuesday’s hearing.
At least five other class action suits have also been filed against China in recent weeks in Florida, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Senators and witnesses discussed whether lawsuits were the best course of action to hold Beijing accountable.
“I believe this legal action is worth taking on behalf of the people of Mississippi. We cannot ignore what China did,” Fitch said.
But none of the suits are likely to proceed into the trial phase, many legal experts say, because of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
For a country to be sued in US courts under that law, it would need to have committed an act of terrorism, caused personal injury or death in the US, harmed the US and its citizens through commercial activity, or wrongfully seized the property of the US or American citizens.
The question now is whether the pending lawsuits against China would qualify for an exemption – and, if not, whether Congress would be willing to take steps to change the law. It was not clear from Tuesday’s hearing whether there is bipartisan appetite in Washington to do that.
In 2016, Congress amended the law to allow victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia. Then-president Barack Obama vetoed the legislation but he was overridden by Congress.
A handful of new bills have been introduced in the House and Senate in recent months that would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act again – this time, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, to go after China.
