Whether the Fifth Circuit's application of the act of state doctrine conflicts with precedent regarding adjudication of foreign sovereign acts and whether the court's improper inferences impermissibly expand Rule 12(b)(6) standards

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The act of state doctrine has been applied by the lower courts to bar United States courts from declaring invalid the official acts of a foreign sovereign performed within its own territory. But if a court is only required to review the effects of a foreign sovereign’s act, but not the validity of the act, the act of state doctrine does not apply. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) (“Rule 12(b)(6)”) allows a court to dismiss a complaint if it fails to state a plausible claim upon which relief may be granted. However, a complaint survives a motion to dismiss if it contains sufficient factual matter that, accepted as true, states a claim to relief that is facially plausible. In this case, the Fifth Circuit erred in affirming the trial court’s improper inferences in favor of Respondent, and against Petitioner. Specifically, the Fifth Circuit erroneously concluded that (1) a foreign sovereign made a determination about the ownership of a piece of art, even though the well-pleaded allegations asserted that the artwork was never in that foreign sovereign’s possession, and (2) the acts of a non-profit entity located within the jurisdictional limits of the foreign sovereign were “official acts” of the sovereign because the non-profit entity was sufficiently tied to the official foreign government , despite wellpleaded allegations to the contrary. The questions presented are: 1. Whether the Fifth Circuit’s application of the act of state doctrine conflicts with well-established precedent that adjudicating the effects of a foreign sovereign’s acts is not a determination of the validity ii of the acts, but rather is a determination of whether the act occurred at all. 2. Whether the Fifth Circuit’s improper inferences impermissibly expands the scope of the Rule 12(b)(6) standards to dismiss and deprives Petitioners of the one forum available in the United States to recover stolen war art taken from Petitioner’s forebears by the Nazi regime and now located in the United States. iii LIST OF PROCEEDINGS U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit No. 23-20224 Juan Carlos Emden; Nicolas Emden; Michel Emden, v. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Defendant-Appellee. Date of Final Opinion: May 29, 2024 Date of Rehearing Denial: June 25, 2024 US. District Court for the Southern District of Texas No. 4:21-CV-3348 Juan Carlos Emden et al, Plaintiffs, v. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Defendant. Date of Opinion and Order: Signed April 20, 2023; Entered April 24, 2023