But even the Bikini islanders’ attorney is pessimistic about the chances of a hearing before America’s top court.
“Don’t hold out too much hope,” Washington, D.C.-based attorney Jonathan Weisgall said he warned Bikini leaders Wednesday. “The Supreme Court only takes about one percent of the appeals it gets.”
The Bikinians contend that the U.S. Congress cannot take away their U.S. Constitution Fifth Amendment protections for just compensation payments for damage the nuclear testing program did to their islands. But the U.S. Justice Department said in earlier court hearings that the U.S. Congress provided a “full and final” settlement through a $150 million compensation fund in a Compact of Free Association approved by the U.S. and Marshall Islands governments in 1986.
The U.S. government tested 23 nuclear weapons on Bikini, including “Bravo” in 1954, the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated by the U.S. Bikini was the site of America’s first post-World War II nuclear tests and the atoll is still uninhabited because of radiation contamination.
The Bikinians filed suit in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims in 2006 after a Nuclear Claims Tribunal established with U.S. funding issued a $563 million damage award in their favor but did not have the money to pay it.
The Bikini lawsuit filed in 2006 was first dismissed by the Court of Claims and the lower court’s ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit earlier this year.
“Between 1946 and 1958, the United States’ nuclear testing program irradiated and partially vaporized the Bikini Atoll while the atoll was under U.S. trusteeship and its people were U.S. dependents,” the Bikinians’ appeal to the Supreme Court said.
In 1986, Congress created a Nuclear Claims Tribunal to adjudicate the Bikinians’ claims against the U.S. for the taking of their land, and withdrew jurisdiction of U.S. courts to judge those claims.
More than 20 years after using the Nuclear Claims Tribunal process, the Bikinians received only $2,279,179.40 — less than one percent of the $563 million awarded by the Tribunal as the Majuro-based agency has exhausted all U.S.-provided compensation funds.
