JASTA Turns Ten Today: Old Overseas Work Can Still Reach Your Records and Your People
That overseas project wrapped up years ago, so it cannot come back to us.
For a company that shipped, sourced, or contracted in conflict regions between 2001 and 2016, that assumption has a date problem. Today, September 28, 2026, is the tenth anniversary of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).
JASTA amended the federal Anti-Terrorism Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2333(d), to allow claims against anyone who knowingly provided substantial assistance to, or conspired with, those behind an act of international terrorism by a designated foreign terrorist organization, reaching injuries back to September 11, 2001. How far back a particular claim can reach turns on where the business operated, who it paid, and what it knew at the time.
Owners miss the timing.
Claims under the Act carry a ten-year limitations period, and some federal courts have read JASTA claims as accruing on the day the law was enacted, which would make today the first date older aiding-and-abetting claims begin to expire. That reading is contested, and defendants in pending cases continue to challenge the statute’s retroactive reach, so nobody should treat today as the end of the exposure.
Deadlines pull filings forward.
Here is where it becomes an employment problem. These cases are built from a company’s own paper and its own people: payment approvals, security arrangements, logistics records, and the employees and former employees who handled them.
If a retention schedule quietly deletes files from those years after a claim becomes reasonably foreseeable, the question in litigation stops being what happened overseas and becomes why the documents are gone.
People are the second exposure. California’s whistleblower statute, Lab. Code § 1102.5, protects employees who disclose information they reasonably believe shows a violation of state or federal law to a supervisor or a government agency, and whether an old concern or a new question qualifies depends on what was said, to whom, and when.
An employee who raised concerns about payments years ago, or who is contacted now as a witness, is exactly the person an owner may be tempted to sideline. Any adverse action that follows those contacts will be read against the timeline.
In HR practice, the pattern I see is that the records people most want later are the ones a routine purge removed first.
Many businesses have no exposure here at all. Those with operations, payments, or suppliers in high-risk regions between 2001 and 2016 should not assume that, and the answer depends on where the company worked, through whom, and what its files still show.
If your business had people, payments, or partners in high-risk regions during those years, the records and employee decisions you make now will shape how any claim unfolds.
Contact Michael Trust Law, APC for a no-charge initial consultation. The facts determine what needs to be addressed – and how much of a conversation that takes.
This post shares general information based on common patterns I see in California workplaces. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and outcomes depend on specific facts – no lawyer can guarantee a result. Past results do not guarantee or predict future outcomes. AI may have been used to create this post. All content reviewed by a CA attorney before publication.