The House unanimously approved a bill Thursday to allow Americans to sue Saudi Arabia over 9/11, setting up what could be the first veto override of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The Senate also unanimously approved the bill earlier this year, which would allow the families of 9/11 victims to win lawsuits against the Saudis they’ve been pushing for years. Obama has threatened to veto the bill, and now has that opportunity just ahead of the 15th anniversary of the attacks Sunday.
The bill would revise immunity laws currently sheltering Saudis from American lawsuits in U.S. courts, making it possible for the families to finally get justice. But the administration says it’s concerned about threats of economic retaliation from Saudi Arabia and the possibility of other countries making changes to their own immunity laws in a way that would hurt American interests abroad.
Obama has actually infuriated lawmakers and families of 9/11 victims because of the vigor with which he’s lobbied against the bill. If he does veto the bill, he’s likely to face the first veto override of his presidency.
Saudi Arabia has threatened to dump hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. assets if Congress passes the law. The Saudi foreign minister personally visited Washington and told lawmakers Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets if the law passes, because of the potential for U.S. courts to freeze the assets on behalf of 9/11 families.
Economists have pointed out the unlikelihood of Saudi Arabia following through on the threat to dump U.S. assets, because its own currency would suffer from the resulting economic turmoil since it is tied to the dollar and because it would be very hard to pull off on such a large scale.
“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” Mindy Kleinberg, part of a group of 9/11 victims’ families backing the bill, told TheNYT in April.
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