U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Minimum Contacts for Personal Jurisdiction Over Foreign States Under Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA)

By John Delikanakis and Tia Zghaib¹

On June 5, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision requiring a plaintiff seeking to confirm an arbitration award against a foreign state to prove minimum contacts with the United States in addition to proving proper service and a statutory exception to sovereign immunity under the FSIA.² The Court’s opinion in CC/Devas (Mauritius) Ltd. v. Antrix Corp. Ltd. (No. 23-1201) can be read here.

The Contract, Arbitration, and Court Proceedings
The case arose out of a 2005 contract between Antrix Corp. Ltd. (Antrix), an Indian company owned by the Republic of India, and Devas Multimedia Private Ltd. (Devas), a privately-owned Indian company.³ The contract was for the lease of space satellites.⁴ In 2011, just before the satellites were to be launched, the Indian government determined that the capacity of the Devas satellites was insufficient to meet its needs and cancelled the contract, invoking its force majeure clause.⁵
 
In response, Devas invoked the contract’s arbitration clause and initiated proceedings against Antrix.⁶ In 2015, Devas received a unanimous arbitration award from a three-member panel for $562.5 million, plus interest.⁷ Devas confirmed its award in the courts of France and the United Kingdom.⁸ In 2018, Devas moved the U.S. District Court of Washington to confirm its award and obtained a judgment for $1.29 billion.⁹ Before Devas could collect on that judgment, a group of Devas shareholders and a Devas subsidiary successfully intervened in the District of Washington proceedings, secured post-judgment discovery regarding Antrix’s U.S. assets, and registered the judgment in the Eastern District of Virginia.¹⁰ Additionally, the High Court of New Delhi set aside the arbitration award in proceedings in India, alleging fraud in the arbitral process.¹¹
 
Several appeals in the United States followed, and the Ninth Circuit held (bound by circuit precedent) that the FSIA imposed an additional requirement beyond the statute’s expressly stated conditions — namely, “a traditional minimum contacts analysis” under International Shoe.¹² The Ninth Circuit held that Devas failed to prove that Antrix had the requisite minimum contacts with the United States, and that the lawsuit below had to be dismissed.¹³
 
The FSIA
The FSIA was enacted in 1976 to provide a statutory framework to cleanly determine when a foreign state could be sued in a U.S. district court.¹⁴ The FSIA codifies the general rule that foreign states are accorded sovereign immunity, except where the FSIA’s enumerated exceptions apply.¹⁵ In particular, the FSIA waives immunity for suits to confirm arbitration awards in four defined instances.¹⁶ Once an immunity exception applies, the FSIA then provides for both personal and subject-matter jurisdiction, provided service has been effected pursuant to § 1608 of the FSIA.¹⁷
 
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Opinion
The Court’s opinion is beautifully simple in its analysis. The thrust is that (a) Congress expressly intended the FSIA to be the sole basis under which sovereign immunity could be stripped for the purposes of being sued in U.S. courts, and (b) that there is no reference to “minimum contacts” in § 1330(b) of the FSIA, which provides the instances where personal and general jurisdiction over a foreign state is authorized.¹⁸ The Court noted that, “this provision provides two substantive requirements—one related to subject matter jurisdiction, the other related to service of process.”¹⁹ § 1330(a) provides that U.S. courts shall have original [subject matter] jurisdiction when any exception specified in §§ 1605-1607 applies.²⁰ § 1330(b) confers personal jurisdiction when proper service has been effected.²¹ Thus, “the most natural reading of [§ 1330(b)] is that personal jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign is automatic whenever 1) an immunity exception applies and 2) service of process has been accomplished . . . Or phrased in even simpler terms, subject matter jurisdiction plus service of process equals personal jurisdiction” (internal citations omitted).²² The Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.²³
 
The Takeaway
In many respects, the opinion in CC/Devas (Mauritius) Ltd. v. Antrix Corp. Ltd. is unexceptional, except for its clean and compact analysis of a simply worded and simply structured statute. Antrix did not even defend the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning at the U.S. Supreme Court, but rather relied on other legal theories to justify the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion, which the Supreme Court declined to address.²⁴ Yet for litigants seeking to confirm an arbitration award against a foreign state, CC/Devas (Mauritius) is a welcome and final word on what standards establish personal jurisdiction in United States federal courts to confirm arbitration awards against foreign states.