California law to help Holocaust survivors recover stolen art
Hillel Aron
LOS ANGELES (CN) — California Governor Gavin Newsom appeared at the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles Monday to sign a new law aimed at helping residents in the state recover art and other personal property stolen by Nazis during the Holocaust, or as a result of political persecution.
“For survivors of the Holocaust and their families, the fight to take back ownership of art and other personal items stolen by the Nazis continues to traumatize those who have already gone through the unimaginable," said Newsom in a press release. "It is both a moral and legal imperative that these valuable and sentimental pieces be returned to their rightful owners."
The law, Assembly Bill 2867, was written by State Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel in response to a recent Ninth Circuit ruling that sided with a Spanish museum in a long-running legal dispute with a Jewish family, the Cassirers, over a painting by the Danish-French impressionist, Camille Pissarro. The piece, "Rue St.-Honore, Apres-Midi, Effet de Pluie," was stolen by Nazis from a Jewish family fleeing Germany in 1939 and later sold to the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid in 1992.
"AB 2867 mandates that California law must apply in lawsuits involving the theft of art or other personal property looted during the Holocaust or due to other acts of political persecution," according to Newsom's press release.
David Cassirer, whose family had sued the Spanish museum over the Pissarro painting, appeared at the bill signing ceremony with Newsom and said the law would enable his family "to finally recover our impressionist masterpiece."
His attorney, Sam Dubbin, said in a written statement: "This new law is essential for truth, history, and justice for the Cassirer family — and the future cases as well. This law sends a clear message from the people of California to all museums and governments — including the government of Spain — that museums should have no right to hold stolen art."
Attorney General Rob Bonta and his predecessor, Kamala Harris, had argued that California law should have already applied to cases like that of the Cassirers, and that the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid should have turned over the impressionist painting. The Cassirer's suit made it all the way to a bench trial in 2019, when a U.S. District Judge concluded that the museum should keep the painting, since it had no knowledge that it had been stolen from a Jewish family at the onset of World War II. The Ninth Circuit agreed.
But in 2022, the case was revived by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that the district court had wrongly dismissed Spain from the lawsuit on the grounds that the country was immune.
“A foreign state or instrumentality in a [Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act] suit is liable just as a private party would be," Justice Elena Kagan wrote.
Nonetheless, the Ninth Circuit once again sided with Spain and its museum earlier this year, finding that the question of who rightfully owned the painting must be based on Spanish law, rather than American or Californian law.
"California’s governmental interest rests solely on the fortuity that Claude Cassirer moved to California in 1980, at a time when the Cassirer family believed the painting had been lost or destroyed," wrote Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Carlos Bea in the ruling. "None of the relevant conduct involving the painting occurred in California."
The Cassirers and Gabriel hope that AB 2867 will tilt the balance over to California, but it's unclear if it will make any difference in the eyes of federal judges.