Class Action Lawsuit Against California Congress Members Over Gaza Genocide Goes International
By Lois Pearlman / Mondoweiss
What began as one northern California activist’s idea to up the ante on pressure against local congressmen who support Israel’s assault on Gaza has turned into a plan to air the issue in the international arena.
Retired high school history teacher Seth Donnelly, a resident of Boyes Hot Springs in Sonoma County, California, said he was fed up with his Congress member Mike Thompson, who refused to respond to phone calls, emails, and protests demanding that he stop funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“I even invited him to speak before a student human rights group at Rancho Cotate High School,” Donnelly said, referring to the school where he taught until recently. “When the students asked him if he would agree to vote against more military aid to Israel, he refused.”
At that point, joined by Fort Bragg activist Anna Marie Stenberg and members of Sonoma County for Palestine, Donnelly initiated a class action lawsuit against Thompson and another local Congress member, Jared Huffman. Stenberg is a former paralegal and long-time activist who was excited to find a new avenue for addressing the ongoing siege of Gaza. Sonoma County for Palestine had been holding weekly ceasefire vigils since late October 2023.
Stenberg told Mondoweiss, “I had been thinking, what else can we do? When Seth called me about a class action lawsuit I jumped on it right away.”
Once the group decided to prepare a lawsuit, it began calling itself Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG) By the time the lawsuit reached a federal district court it had garnered almost 2,000 class members from 18 northern California counties, and some 100 to 150 volunteers were actively working on the case.
Late last year TAG filed the class action lawsuit against two Democratic congressmen, Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman, who represent 10 coastal counties from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border.
A month later, excited by the prospect of reaching representatives who had been ignoring their concerns about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, taxpayers from eight additional Bay Area counties joined the lawsuit.
Then, on February 10 Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern California Federal District Court in San Francisco dashed the group’s hopes by dismissing the entire case.
His order reads, “This case is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Even if plaintiffs could establish Article III standing, the case nevertheless presents a nonjustciable political question.”
This means he determined the case was political, not legal, and the court does not have jurisdiction to intervene in a decision from either the legislative or executive branches of government.
But the judge’s ruling did not deter TAG. Even before his dismissal, they had begun working with attorneys from the National Lawyers’ Guild on the next step in their quest to prove the U.S. Congress and the Biden administration had violated both federal and international by sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, even when they should have known Israel was using the money and weapons to commit human rights violations.
Right now TAG is gearing up to present their case to the United Nations Human Rights Council Periodic Review, which convenes once every four years. They hope to bring at least 10,000 U.S. taxpayers onboard between now and then. Everybody who pays federal taxes in the U. S. is eligible to sign on, whether or not they are U.S. citizens.
The original lawsuit is based on three federal laws and two international standards. The federal laws include the Leahy Law, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and the Arms Export Control Act, all of which make it illegal for the U.S. government to provide military assistance to governments or units of a foreign security force that use the aid to commit human rights violations.
Former Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, who authored the Leahy Law in 1997, agreed that Congress and President Biden’s administration were violating it by not applying it to Israel.
In a May 20, 2024, Washington Post opinion piece Leahy wrote, “Since the Leahy Law was passed not a single Israeli security force has been deemed ineligible for U. S. aid, despite repeated credible reports of gross violations of human rights and a pattern of failing to appropriately punish Israeli soldiers and police who violate the rights of Palestinians.”
In addition to federal law violations, the lawsuit claims that the two Congress members violated the International Genocide Convention, which the U.S. has ratified, and the Genocide Implementation Act, which criminalizes complicity in genocide. Several human rights organizations, and individual countries, have said Israel is committing genocide, including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese.
According to the lawsuit, Huffman and Thompson overstepped their tax and spend authority when they voted in favor of the Israel Security Supplemental Act April 20, 2024, which authorized $26.38 billion in military aid for Israel. The bill passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Biden.
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution limits the legislature’s power to collect taxes only for the common defense and general welfare of the country.
In addition to the first lawsuit filed against Thompson, TAG filed an amended lawsuit a month later that also names Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Kevin Mullin, Jimmy Panetta, and Anna Eshoo, California Senators Alejandro Padilla and Laphonza R. Butler, and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin.
Class members span the spectrum from college students to retirees, and include Palestinians, Jews, Latinas, First People, and many others. Most of them have been contacting their Congress members repeatedly since Israel began its assault on Gaza. Many of them are veteran activists, both for Palestine and a variety of other causes.
Tarik Kanaana, a Palestinian American who works in child nutrition, has worked on labor rights, immigration issues, housing justice, and tenants’ rights. He is a longtime resident of Santa Rosa, California, and one of the founding members of Sonoma County for Palestine. He often cries when he speaks about what Israel is doing to his homeland and his people.
“Every day since this genocide began 440 days ago I have had to witness Israel savagely kill and maim Palestinians in Gaza and other parts of the Palestinian homeland. I have shed so many tears,” he said at a rally held in front of the federal district court in San Francisco on January 19. Then he continued, “ During those 440 days I have witnessed the destruction of parts of my history and parts of the beautiful culture of which I am a product.”
Next steps
Huwaida Arraf, one of the National Lawyers Guild members working on the case, said TAG is now following two different tracks. One, she said, is the plan to bring it before the UN Human Rights Council for Review, and the other is to seek out other international courts and commissions. Arraf is a Palestinian American, a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, and a two-time participant in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
“We are appealing to the international system because our justice system has repeatedly made it clear that it is not going to intervene to stop heinous crimes or hold perpetrators accountable,” she said.
One such avenue is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It is the body that supports the American Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by most nations in the Americas on May 2, 1948, in Bogota, Colombia. While its findings are not legally binding, they are considered to be a source of international obligations for the Organization of American States’ members. The U.S. did not ratify this declaration but it is expected to abide by it.
And then there is what Arraf calls “universal jurisdiction.”
An example of that occurred recently when Brazil attempted to bring a case against a former IDF soldier who boasted on social media about the human rights violations he committed in Gaza. Fortunately for the soldier the Israeli government whisked him away before Brazil could begin the investigation. Brazil is a signatory to the Rome Statute and it abides by the International Criminal Court’s decisions.
So how are TAG members feeling about stepping into the international arena, something they never could have imagined when they decided last year to sue their local congressmen?
Kanaana tells Mondoweiss, “Of course the dismissal (of the class action lawsuit) was a disappointment, but I was sure they would find some way to dismiss it. It’s just more proof that the government is set up to protect itself.”
Then he went on to say about working internationally, “I don’t expect there can be anything binding. It’s just calling them (the U.S. government) out.”
Norman Solomon, a journalist, activist, and author who is Jewish, said, “ I think it‘s a good step. But it does not challenge the political power of any member of congress. In my lifetime I can’t remember seeing the U.S. court ever preventing the U.S. government from slaughtering civilians overseas.
Donnelly, who began this entire project by becoming fed up with his Congress member, sees going international as a great organizing tool whose time has come.
“I think that the current moment we are in makes it more important to organize, to go out into the world. If we don’t develop a popular grassroots movement, then who will do that? The U.S. is the source of so many human rights violations. It is our duty to do this.”