Thomas, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 16–1094
REPUBLIC OF SUDAN, PETITIONER v. RICK HARRISON, ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
[March 26, 2019]
Justice Thomas, dissenting.
The Court holds that service on a foreign state by certified mail under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) is defective unless the packet is “addressed and dispatched to the foreign minister at the minister’s office in the foreign state.” Ante, at 17 (emphasis added). This bright-line rule may be attractive from a policy perspective, but the FSIA neither specifies nor precludes the use of any particular address. Instead, the statute requires only that the packet be sent to a particular person—“the head of the ministry of foreign affairs.” 28 U. S. C. §1608(a)(3).
Given the unique role that embassies play in facilitating communications between states, a foreign state’s embassy in Washington, D. C., is, absent an indication to the contrary, a place where a U. S. litigant can serve the state’s foreign minister. Because there is no evidence in this case suggesting that Sudan’s Embassy declined the service packet addressed to its foreign minister—as it was free to do—I would hold that respondents complied with the FSIA when they addressed and dispatched a service packet to Sudan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs at Sudan’s Embassy in Washington, D. C. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
