# Plain Language Summary: Jamal Khashoggi Protection for Dissidents and Journalists Act

This bill is named after Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and Washington Post columnist who was killed in 2018 at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. U.S. intelligence concluded that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince approved his murder. The bill aims to prevent similar killings by making it easier for victims and their families to sue foreign governments in U.S. courts and by barring people involved in such activities from entering the United States.

The bill makes two major changes to U.S. law. First, it modifies the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which normally prevents people from suing foreign governments in American courts. Under this new rule, if a foreign government or its agents kill or injure someone outside their own country through activities targeting journalists, activists, or political dissidents, the victims or their families can now sue that government in U.S. courts for money damages. This is a significant shift because it removes the legal shield that typically protects foreign governments from lawsuits. Second, the bill creates what's called the "Khashoggi Ban," which prevents people from entering the United States if they're determined to be working for a foreign government and are directly involved in suppressing, harassing, surveilling, threatening, or harming journalists, activists, or dissidents. This ban can also apply to family members of such people, though that's left somewhat to the discretion of the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.

In practical terms, this bill targets authoritarian governments that hunt down critics and journalists outside their borders. It gives victims a legal avenue to seek justice in American courts and uses immigration restrictions as a deterrent against such activities. The bill includes a national security waiver, meaning the government can make exceptions if it determines doing so is in the nation's interest, though any such waiver must be reported to Congress. The law would apply to incidents dating back to October 2, 2017, and the government would be required to publicly identify anyone deemed inadmissible under the Khashoggi Ban.

Jamal Khashoggi Protection for Dissidents and Journalists Act of 2022

McCollum, Betty

Jamal Khashoggi Protection for Dissidents and Journalists Act of 2022 This bill strips away sovereign immunity from a foreign state in certain legal proceedings where the plaintiff is seeking money damages for injuries or death caused by that foreign state's counter-dissident activities. (Generally, foreign states are immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, including state courts, except in certain situations, such as when the foreign state has waived immunity.) The bill also makes inadmissible into the United States a non-U.S. national (alien under federal law) who has engaged in certain serious and extraterritorial counter-dissident activities on behalf of a foreign government, including actions to harass or harm journalists or activists.