Americans for Peace Now (APN) welcomes the Supreme Court ruling rejecting efforts by Congress and outside groups to wrest control from the Executive Branch over foreign policy-making by legislating the status of Jerusalem in isolation of the context of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

As an American Jewish, Zionist, pro-peace organization, APN was alone in the Jewish organizational world weighing in against the law in question, going so far as to submit an Amicus Brief  to the Supreme Court when it considered the case for the first time in 2011.

APN President and CEO Debra DeLee commented today:

"This ruling by the Supreme Court highlights what APN has said all along: this case was never about how Jerusalem is recorded as a place of birth on U.S. passports. Rather, it has always been about Congress trying to seize control from the Executive Branch over one of the most sensitive foreign policy issues in the world today: Recognition of sovereignty over Jerusalem and the final status of this divided city, a question that is one of the most contentious so-called 'core issues' that need to be resolved between Israelis and Palestinians.

"As APN argued previously, this country's founding fathers sought to at least partially immunize the determination of foreign policy from the pressures and vagaries of passion and populism - forces to which the Legislative Branch is far more exposed than the Executive. APN believes that foreign policy issues related to Jerusalem are the quintessential example of why they believed, correctly, that it was important to do so."

For more background on this issue:

* Our July 2013 press release 

* Our October 2011 press release 

* Our November 2011 Haaretz op-ed 

* Our Supreme Court amicus brief