Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-23-07038/USCOURTS-caDC-23-07038-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Blasket Renewable Investments LLC
Appellant
Kingdom of Spain
Appellee
Republic of Croatia
Amicus Curiae for Appellee
The European Commission
Amicus Curiae for Appellee
United States of America
Amicus Curiae

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 28, 2024 Decided August 16, 2024

No. 23-7031

NEXTERA ENERGY GLOBAL HOLDINGS B.V. AND NEXTERA

ENERGY SPAIN HOLDINGS B.V.,

APPELLEES

v.

KINGDOM OF SPAIN,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:19-cv-01618)

Sarah M. Harris argued the cause for appellant. With her 

on the briefs were Matthew J. Weldon, Lisa S. Blatt, Jonathan 

M. Landy, Benjamin W. Graham, Aaron Z. Roper, and Noah C. 

McCullough.

Sally L. Pei argued the cause for amicus curiae the 

European Commission in support of appellant. With her on the 

brief was R. Stanton Jones.

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 1 of 63
2

Donald I. Baker, W. Todd Miller, and Erin Glavich were 

on the brief for amicus curiae the Government for the Kingdom 

of the Netherlands in support of appellant.

Sharon Swingle, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for amicus curiae United States of America 

in support of appellant. With her on the brief were Brian M. 

Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and 

Thomas Pulham, Attorney.

Shay Dvoretzky argued the cause for appellees. With him 

on the briefs were Timothy G. Nelson, Bradley A. Klein, Parker 

Rider-Longmaid, Sylvia O. Tsakos, David Herlihy, Ashley C. 

Parrish, Reginald R. Smith, and Thomas C. Childs.

Peter B. Rutledge was on the brief for amicus curiae the 

Chamber of Commerce for the United States of America in 

support of appellees.

Paul M. Levine, James J. East, Jr., and Carlos RamosMrosovsky were on the brief for amicus curiae International 

Scholars in support of appellees.

Steven A. Engel and Michael H. McGinley were on the 

brief for amicus curiae MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas PLC in 

support of appellees.

Matthew D. McGill, Matthew S. Rozen, Jeffrey Liu, and 

Lavi M. Ben Dor were on the brief for amicus curiae Blasket 

Renewable Investments LLC in support of appellees.

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 2 of 63
3

No. 23-7032

9REN HOLDING S.A.R.L.,

APPELLEE

v.

KINGDOM OF SPAIN,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:19-cv-01871)

Sarah M. Harris argued the cause for appellant. With her 

on the briefs were Matthew J. Weldon, Lisa S. Blatt, Jonathan 

M. Landy, Benjamin W. Graham, Aaron Z. Roper, and Noah C. 

McCullough.

Sally L. Pei argued the cause for amicus curiae the 

European Commission in support of appellant. With her on the 

brief was R. Stanton Jones.

Sharon Swingle, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for amicus curiae United States of America 

in support of appellant. With her on the brief were Brian M. 

Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and 

Thomas Pulham, Attorney.

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 3 of 63
4

Shay Dvoretzky argued the cause for appellees. With him 

on the briefs were Timothy G. Nelson, Bradley A. Klein, Parker 

Rider-Longmaid, Sylvia O. Tsakos, David Herlihy, Ashley C. 

Parrish, Reginald R. Smith, and Thomas C. Childs.

Peter B. Rutledge was on the brief for amicus curiae the 

Chamber of Commerce for the United States of America in 

support of appellees.

Paul M. Levine, James J. East, Jr., and Carlos RamosMrosovsky were on the brief for amicus curiae International 

Scholars in support of appellees.

Steven A. Engel and Michael H. McGinley were on the 

brief for amicus curiae MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas PLC in 

support of appellees.

Matthew D. McGill, Matthew S. Rozen, Jeffrey Liu, and 

Lavi M. Ben Dor were on the brief for amicus curiae Blasket 

Renewable Investments LLC in support of appellees.

No. 23-7038

BLASKET RENEWABLE INVESTMENTS LLC,

APPELLANT

v.

KINGDOM OF SPAIN,

APPELLEE

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5

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:21-cv-03249)

Matthew D. McGill argued the cause for appellant. With 

him on the briefs were Matthew S. Rozen, Jeffrey Liu, and Lavi 

M. Ben Dor.

Sarah M. Harris argued the cause for appellee. With her 

on the brief were Lisa S. Blatt, Jonathan M. Landy, Benjamin 

W. Graham, Aaron Z. Roper, and Noah C. McCullough.

Sally L. Pei argued the cause for amicus curiae the 

European Commission in support of appellant. With her on the 

brief was R. Stanton Jones.

John A. Burlingame, Stephen P. Anway, and Dimitar P. 

Georgiev-Remmel were on the brief for amicus curiae the 

Republic of Croatia in support of appellee.

Sharon Swingle, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for amicus curiae United States of America 

in support of appellant. With her on the brief were Brian M. 

Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and 

Thomas Pulham, Attorney.

Before: PILLARD and PAN, Circuit Judges, and ROGERS, 

Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD.

Opinion dissenting in part filed by Circuit Judge PAN.

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PILLARD, Circuit Judge: A collection of Dutch and 

Luxembourgish energy companies made investments in the 

Kingdom of Spain in reliance on promised economic subsidies. 

Several years later, in the wake of 2008 financial crisis, Spain 

withdrew those subsidies to control costs. The companies 

challenged Spain’s action. Instead of going to court, they 

invoked an arbitration clause in the Energy Charter Treaty, a

multilateral investment treaty whose signatories include most 

countries within the European Union, among them Spain, the 

Netherlands, and Luxembourg, along with some countries 

outside of Europe. The companies prevailed in their respective

arbitrations and secured multi-million-euro awards. The 

European Union, however, has taken the position that the 

Energy Charter Treaty’s arbitration provision does not apply to 

disputes between a national of one EU Member State and 

another EU Member State, and so the resulting arbitral awards 

are invalid as a matter of EU law. If the companies sought to 

enforce the awards in an EU national court, they would lose. 

So, the companies came to the United States. Although 

the United States is not a signatory to the Energy Charter 

Treaty, it is a signatory to other treaties—namely, the ICSID 

Convention and the New York Convention—that obligate it to 

enforce certain foreign arbitral awards. Invoking those treaties, 

the companies filed enforcement petitions in the United States 

District Court for the District of Columbia. 

Spain defended itself in two ways relevant here. It moved 

to dismiss the petitions on the ground that it enjoys sovereign 

immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 

U.S.C. § 1602 et. seq. And Spain filed its own lawsuits in 

Dutch and Luxembourgish courts seeking, among other things, 

an anti-suit injunction to prevent the companies from 

proceeding with their petitions to enforce their arbitral awards

in United States courts. In response, the companies argued that 

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the district courts had jurisdiction under the FSIA’s waiver and 

arbitration exceptions and asked the district courts for their 

own anti-anti-suit injunction to enjoin Spain from seeking in 

foreign courts to enjoin the United States court proceedings. 

The district courts resolved those motions in opposing 

ways. The court presiding over NextEra Energy Global 

Holdings B.V. v. Kingdom of Spain, 656 F. Supp. 3d 201 

(D.D.C. 2023), and 9REN Holding S.A.R.L. v. Kingdom of 

Spain, No. 19-cv-1871, 2023 WL 2016933 (D.D.C. Feb. 15, 

2023), held that it had jurisdiction under the FSIA’s arbitration 

exception and denied Spain’s motion to dismiss in NextEra. (A 

motion to dismiss was not at issue in 9REN.) Exercising that 

jurisdiction, the court granted both companies’ requested 

injunctions to prevent Spain from seeking anti-suit relief in 

foreign courts. 

By contrast, in Blasket Renewable Investments, LLC v. 

Kingdom of Spain, 665 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2023), the district 

court deemed Spain immune under the FSIA and denied as 

moot the companies’ requested injunction. Spain appeals the 

adverse decisions in NextEra and 9REN, while a successor to 

some of the companies appeals the adverse decision in Blasket. 

Because the cases raise similar issues, we heard argument on 

the same day and now resolve them in a single opinion. 

For the reasons that follow, we hold that the district courts 

have jurisdiction under the FSIA’s arbitration exception to 

confirm these arbitration awards against Spain, but that the 

court in NextEra and 9REN abused its discretion by enjoining 

Spain from pursuing anti-suit relief in Dutch and 

Luxembourgish courts. We therefore affirm in part and reverse 

in part in NextEra; reverse in 9REN and Blasket; and remand 

for further proceedings.

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I.

A.

These cases concern the relationship between three sets of 

multilateral international treaties: (1) the Treaty on the 

Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and the Treaty on

European Union (TEU) (collectively, the EU Treaties), which 

created and now govern the European Union; (2) the Energy 

Charter Treaty (ECT), an investment treaty adopted to promote 

international cooperation in the energy sector; and (3) the 

ICSID Convention (also known as the Convention on the 

Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and 

Nationals of Other States) and the New York Convention (also 

known as the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement 

of Foreign Arbitral Awards), two treaties designed to facilitate

the enforcement of international arbitration awards. 

The Energy Charter Treaty was signed in 1994 among 53 

nations and regional organizations to promote international 

cooperation in the energy sector. See Energy Charter Treaty 

art. 2, Dec. 17, 1994, 2080 U.N.T.S. 95. Its initial signatories 

(also known as contracting parties) included the EU, most EU 

Member States, including Spain, the Netherlands, and 

Luxembourg, and 26 nations outside the EU. The United States 

is not a signatory. See Int’l Energy Charter, Contracting 

Parties and Signatories of the Energy Charter Treaty, 

https://perma.cc/XA3F-L2R2. 

While these cases were pending, the EU, Spain, and 

Luxembourg each announced its intention to withdraw from 

the ECT. See NextEra 28(j) Letter dated May 20, 2024; 

NextEra 28(j) Letter dated July 9, 2024. Under Article 47 of 

the ECT, these withdrawals “shall take effect” one year after 

their announcement. ECT art. 47(2). Because the withdrawals

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post-date the events in question, we refer to the EU, Spain, and 

Luxembourg throughout this opinion as signatories to the ECT.

The ECT protects investments in the territory of a 

“Contracting Party” by “Investors” located or incorporated in 

“other Contracting Parties.” Id. art. 10; see also id. arts. 1(7), 

26. In particular, Article 10(1) mandates that contracting 

parties give “fair and equitable treatment” to the investments 

of other contracting parties’ investors. Id. art. 10(1). To 

effectuate that protection, Article 26 provides that a foreign 

investor “may choose to submit” to international arbitration 

any “[d]ispute[] between a Contracting Party and an Investor 

of another Contracting Party relating to” a covered investment. 

Id. art. 26(1), (2). By joining the ECT, a state 

“unconditional[ly] consent[s]” to “international arbitration” of 

investment disputes at the investor’s election. Id., art. 26(3). 

Investors can choose among several arbitral tribunals, 

including the International Centre for Settlement of Investment 

Disputes (ICSID) or an hoc arbitration tribunal under the 

Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on 

International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). Id. art. 26(4)(a), (b). 

Regardless of arbitral forum, the ECT provides that tribunals 

“shall decide the issues in dispute in accordance with this 

Treaty and applicable rules and principles of international 

law.” Id. art. 26(6). ICSID awards may be enforced under the 

ICSID Convention, while UNCITRAL awards may be 

enforced under the New York Convention. See ICSID 

Convention art. 54(1), opened for signature Mar. 18, 1965, 17 

U.S.T. 1270; New York Convention art. III, June 10, 1958, 21 

U.S.T. 2517. 

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B.

1.

NextEra Energy Global Holdings B.V. and NextEra 

Energy Spain Holdings B.V. (collectively, NextEra) are Dutch 

companies, as are AES Solar Energy Coöperatief U.A. and 

Ampere Equity Fund B.V. (collectively, AES). 9REN Holding 

S.À.R.L. (9REN) is a Luxembourgish company. Between 

2007 and 2012, the companies made investments in solar 

power projects in Spain in reliance on that country’s promise 

that they could charge subsidized electricity rates, ensuring 

profitable returns. NextEra and 9REN invested approximately 

€750 million and €211 million, respectively; AES did not detail 

the magnitude of its investment, but it was part of a broader 

group of investors that cumulatively invested approximately €2 

billion. 

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Spain withdrew 

those subsidies in an effort to control costs. In response, the 

companies commenced arbitration under Article 26 of the 

ECT. Because Spain, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are 

signatories to the ICSID Convention, NextEra and 9REN 

decided to arbitrate before ICSID tribunals in Washington D.C. 

AES opted to proceed before an ad hoc UNCITRAL tribunal 

seated in Geneva, Switzerland. The companies argued that 

Spain failed to give their investments “fair and equitable 

treatment” in violation of Article 10(1) of the ECT.

While those arbitral proceedings were ongoing, the Court 

of Justice of the European Union—the EU’s court of last 

resort—issued two landmark decisions that called into question 

the validity of the underlying arbitration agreements. In Slovak 

Republic v. Achmea BV, ECLI:EU:C:2018:158, ¶ 60 (Mar. 6, 

2018), a Dutch company called Achmea prevailed in 

arbitration against the Slovak Republic under the terms of a 

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bilateral investment treaty. Achmea ¶¶ 7, 12. The Slovak 

Republic had unsuccessfully objected in the arbitration to the

arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction, arguing that “as a result of [the 

Slovak Republic’s] accession to the European Union, 

[Achmea’s] recourse to an arbitral tribunal provided for in [the 

bilateral investment treaty] was incompatible with EU law.” 

Id. ¶ 11. Making the same argument in a German national 

court, the Slovak Republic sought to set aside the arbitral 

award, and that court referred the matter to the Court of Justice

of the European Union. Id. ¶ 12. 

The Court of Justice honored the Slovak Republic’s 

objection. The court observed that Member States may not 

“submit a dispute concerning the interpretation or application 

of the [EU] Treaties to any method of settlement other than 

those provided for in the Treaties.” Id. ¶ 32 (citing TFEU art. 

344). And one such requirement, the court explained, is that a

tribunal “called on to interpret or . . . apply EU law,” id. ¶ 42,

must have the authority to “make a reference to the [Court of 

Justice] for a preliminary ruling,” with the “object of securing 

uniform interpretation of EU law, thereby serving to ensure its 

consistency,” id. ¶¶ 37, 49 (citing TFEU art. 267). The court 

reasoned that an arbitral tribunal considering an intra-EU

dispute under an investment treaty “may be called on to 

interpret or indeed to apply EU law,” id. ¶ 42, but, unlike 

national courts, would lack the authority to refer questions of 

EU law to the Court of Justice, id. ¶ 49. As a result, the court 

concluded, a binding commitment to submit intra-EU disputes 

to arbitration could prevent open legal questions “from being 

resolved in a manner that ensures the full effectiveness of EU 

law.” Id. ¶ 56. 

The Court of Justice therefore held that the EU Treaties 

“must be interpreted as precluding a provision in an 

international agreement concluded between [EU] Member 

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States, . . . under which an investor from one of those Member 

States may, in the event of a dispute concerning investments in 

the other Member State, bring proceedings against the latter 

Member State before an arbitral tribunal whose jurisdiction that 

Member State has undertaken to accept.” Id. ¶ 60. As a result, 

the Court of Justice prohibited EU national courts from 

enforcing Achmea’s arbitration award. Id. ¶ 60.

In Republic of Moldova v. Komstroy LLC, 

ECLI:EU:C:2021:655 (Sept. 2, 2021), the Court of Justice 

applied the logic of Achmea to the Energy Charter Treaty’s 

arbitration provision. The Court of Justice first determined 

that, because the European Union is a signatory to the ECT, 

“the ECT itself is an act of EU law.” Komstroy ¶ 49. A tribunal 

constituted under the ECT, therefore, will necessarily be 

“required to interpret, and even apply, EU law.” Id. ¶ 50. And 

because such a tribunal cannot refer such questions to the Court 

of Justice, the Treaty’s arbitration provision could run afoul of 

the EU Treaties in just the same way as the provision at issue 

in Achmea. Apparently embracing a form of interpretation akin 

to our doctrine of constitutional avoidance, the Court of Justice 

concluded that Article 26 of the ECT “must be interpreted as 

not being applicable to disputes between a Member State and 

an investor of another Member State concerning an investment 

made by the latter in the first Member State.” Id. ¶ 66. 

Separately, the European Commission (EC)—the EU’s 

executive branch—identified a different problem with the 

awards. Article 107 of the TFEU prohibits Member States 

from granting “aid” that “distorts or threatens to distort 

competition,” absent the EC’s prior approval. TFEU arts. 107, 

108. The EC determined that Spain’s energy subsidies were 

unapproved “[s]tate aid.” See Euro. Comm’n Decision on State 

Aid, SA.40348, ¶ 88 (Nov. 10, 2017). That meant, according 

to the EC, that any arbitral award successfully challenging 

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Spain’s revocation of the subsidies “would constitute in and of 

itself State aid.” Id. ¶ 165. So, even if the companies prevailed 

in this appeal, EU law would prohibit Spain from paying the 

awards unless and until the EC granted approval to do so. Id. 

The EC is currently considering whether to grant such 

approval, but it has made no decision to date. See NextEra Eur.

Comm’n Amicus Br. 30. 

Both arbitration regimes—ICSID and UNCITRAL—

delegate to the arbitral tribunal the power to decide threshold 

issues of arbitrability. See ICSID Convention art. 41(1) (“The 

Tribunal shall be the judge of its own competence.”); 

UNCITRAL Rules, art. 23(1) (“The arbitral tribunal shall have 

the power to rule on its own jurisdiction, including any 

objections with respect to the existence or validity of the 

arbitration agreement.”). Relying on Achmea and Komstroy, 

Spain argued to the arbitral tribunals that they lacked 

jurisdiction over the disputes because, as a matter of EU law, 

Spain could not lawfully enter into arbitration agreements with 

the companies. Spain made two primary arguments: (1) that 

Article 26(4) of the ECT (the arbitration provision) does not 

cover disputes between an investor in one EU Member State 

and another EU Member State; and (2) that, even if it did, 

Article 26(6) of the ECT (the choice-of-law provision) requires 

the tribunal to apply Achmea and Komstroy to prevent such 

intra-EU arbitration. 

The tribunals rejected Spain’s jurisdictional objection. 

The 9REN tribunal’s analysis is illustrative. First, the tribunal 

concluded that “the plain language of the ECT[’s arbitration 

provision]” does not exclude “intra-EU disputes from the scope 

of ECT.” 9REN J.A. 86. Quoting another tribunal, the 9REN 

tribunal observed that “[i]t would have been a simple matter to 

draft the ECT so that Article 26 does not apply to disputes 

between an Investor of one EU Member State and another EU 

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Member State as respondent.” 9REN J.A. 86 n.102. But “[t]hat 

was not done,” and the tribunal found no other “indication in 

the language of the ECT that any such exclusion was intended.” 

9REN J.A. 86 n.102.

Second, the 9REN tribunal determined that the ECT, so 

construed, does not violate the EU Treaties because the 

tribunal’s “jurisdiction and its exercise in the present case rests 

upon the ECT (with international law as the applicable law) and 

not EU law.” 9REN J.A. at 95-96. And, looking to the ECT’s 

choice-of-law provision, the tribunal reasoned that, “[a]s a 

matter of international law, the notion that EU law may be 

considered only by EU judges is misconceived.” 9REN J.A. at 

94. After all, “[i]nternational courts and tribunals are 

frequently required to consider the laws of domestic or regional 

jurisdictions,” but their conclusions “are not binding on the 

courts or tribunals of the home jurisdiction.” 9REN J.A. at 94. 

Likewise, “[t]he award of an ECT [arbitral] tribunal does not 

in any way represent a threat or challenge to the autonomy or 

authority of the . . . the EU and the [Court of Justice].” 9REN 

J.A. at 94.

On the merits, the tribunals found that Spain violated the 

Energy Charter Treaty and awarded damages in the amount of

€290 million to NextEra, €41 million to 9REN, and €26.5 

million to AES. These awards are not anomalous. Amici point 

out that “Spain now leads the world in noncompliance with 

investor-state awards,” owing “more than $1.3 billion for 16 

unpaid investor-state awards.” NextEra Int’l Scholars Amicus 

Br. 30 & n.23. 

Spain continued to fight these awards through the 

processes laid out in the ICSID and New York Conventions. 

Spain requested review of NextEra’s and 9REN’s awards under 

the ICSID annulment process, arguing that the tribunals

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“manifestly exceed[ed] [their] powers”—one of the five 

recognized grounds for annulment under Article 52 of the 

ICSID Convention. And Spain appealed AES’s award (at issue 

in Blasket) to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, as 

contemplated by Article V(1)(e) of the New York Convention

and Swiss law. Those challenges were unsuccessful. 

2.

Armed with multi-million-euro arbitration awards, the 

companies sought to confirm them in the United States. 

“Confirmation is the process by which an arbitration award is 

converted to a legal judgment.” LLC SPC Stileks v. Republic 

of Moldova, 985 F.3d 871, 875 (D.C. Cir. 2021). It is only once 

an award is confirmed that the prevailing party may seek to 

execute on the resulting judgment “by, for example, attaching 

[the sovereign’s] commercial assets in the United States.” Id. 

As a signatory to the ICSID Convention, the United States 

instructs its federal courts to “enforce[]”—i.e., confirm—

ICSID awards and give them “the same full faith and credit as 

if the award were a final judgment of a court of general 

jurisdiction of one of the several States.” 22 U.S.C. § 1650a(a). 

Likewise, as a signatory to the New York Convention, the 

United States instructs its federal courts to confirm

UNCITRAL awards governed by the Convention “unless it 

finds one of the grounds for refusal or deferral of recognition 

or enforcement of the award specified in the . . . Convention.” 

9 U.S.C. § 207. 

Spain defended itself in two ways. First, it moved to 

dismiss the petitions filed in district court by NextEra and AES

in part on the ground that it enjoyed sovereign immunity under 

the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1602 et seq. (Spain initially moved the district court to 

dismiss 9REN’s petition, but that motion was denied without 

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prejudice when the case was held in abeyance pending the 

outcome of the ICSID annulment proceedings, and Spain did 

not renew its motion to dismiss once the case resumed.) 

Second, Spain filed its own lawsuits in the courts of the 

Netherlands and Luxembourg seeking, among other things, to 

enjoin the companies under EU law from proceeding with their 

petitions in the United States (a so-called anti-suit injunction). 

The companies responded in kind. They argued that the 

district courts had jurisdiction under the FSIA’s waiver and 

arbitration exceptions, and they asked the district courts for 

their own injunctions—anti-anti-suit injunctions—to stop 

Spain from seeking anti-suit injunctions in foreign courts to 

enjoin the U.S. court proceedings. And, in an effort to escape 

the jurisdictional reach of the Dutch courts, AES transferred its

rights in the award to a Delaware company called Blasket 

Renewable Investments LLC (Blasket). Blasket, not AES, is 

an appellant here. 

The district courts resolved these motions in early 2023. 

The district court presiding over NextEra and 9REN held that, 

under our binding precedent, Spain’s assertion that it “could 

not have entered into the ECT’s arbitration provisions because 

EU law . . . does not permit EU members to assign questions of 

EU law to arbitration in non-EU tribunals” was a merits 

defense to enforcement, not a jurisdictional question under the 

FSIA. NextEra Energy Global Holdings B.V. v. Kingdom of 

Spain, 656 F. Supp. 3d 201, 213 (D.D.C. 2023) (citing Stileks, 

985 F.3d at 878-79; Chevron Corp. v. Ecuador, 795 F.3d 200, 

205 & n.3 (D.C. Cir. 2015)); see also 9REN Holding S.À.R.L. 

v. Kingdom of Spain, No. 19-cv-1871, 2023 WL 2016933, at 

*4-6 (D.D.C. Feb. 15, 2023). The court thus held it had 

jurisdiction under the FSIA’s arbitration exception, denied 

Spain’s motion to dismiss in NextEra, and granted the 

companies’ requested injunctions to prevent Spain from 

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seeking anti-suit relief in foreign courts. See NextEra, 656 F. 

Supp. 3d at 215-21; 9REN, 2023 WL 2016933, at *7-13. 

In Blasket, by contrast, the district court granted Spain’s 

motion to dismiss, reasoning that, “[b]ecause Spain’s standing 

offer to arbitrate was void as to the Companies under the [EU]

law to which both Spain and the Companies are subject and 

which applied to the dispute by the terms of the Energy Charter 

Treaty itself, no valid agreement to arbitrate exists.” Blasket 

Renewable Inv., LLC v. Kingdom of Spain, 665 F. Supp. 3d. 1, 

4 (D.D.C. 2023); see id. at 12-13. The Blasket court thus 

deemed Spain immune under the FSIA and denied as moot the 

companies’ requested injunction. Id. at 14 & n.9. 

Spain appeals the adverse decisions in NextEra and 9REN; 

Blasket appeals the adverse decision in Blasket. 

II.

These appeals raise two primary questions. The first 

question is whether the FSIA gives the district courts

jurisdiction to enforce (or decline to enforce) the arbitration 

awards against Spain. The NextEra and 9REN district court 

answered in the affirmative and denied Spain’s motion to 

dismiss NextEra on sovereign immunity grounds; the Blasket

district court said no and granted Spain’s motion to dismiss. 

We have jurisdiction to review dismissals for and denials of 

sovereign immunity under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we do so de 

novo. Kilburn v. Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 

376 F.3d 1123, 1126-27 (D.C. Cir. 2004). The second question 

is whether, assuming it had jurisdiction, the district court in 

NextEra and 9REN abused its discretion by enjoining Spain 

from seeking anti-suit relief under foreign law in foreign 

courts. We have jurisdiction to review the grant of a 

preliminary injunction under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1); our 

review is for abuse of discretion. Laker Airways Ltd. v. 

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Sabena, Belgian World Airlines, 731 F.2d 909, 921 (D.C. Cir. 

1984); see Elec. Privacy Info. Ctr. v. U.S. Dep’t of Commerce, 

928 F.3d 95, 100 (D.C. Cir. 2019).

A.

We begin with jurisdiction. NextEra and 9REN seek to 

enforce their arbitration awards against the Kingdom of Spain

under 22 U.S.C. § 1650a (implementing the ICSID 

Convention), while Blasket seeks to do so under 9 U.S.C. § 203

(implementing the New York Convention). Invoking the 

FSIA, Spain insists that it is immune from the companies’ 

enforcement suits, so the district courts lack jurisdiction over

them. 

The “FSIA codifies a baseline principle of immunity for 

foreign states and their instrumentalities.” Turkiye Halk 

Bankasi A.S. v. United States, 598 U.S. 264, 272 (2023) (citing 

28 U.S.C. § 1604). It then sets out a handful of narrow 

exceptions to that principle. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a). 

The companies contend that two of the FSIA exceptions apply 

in these cases: the waiver exception and the arbitration 

exception. 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(1), (6). 

1.

The waiver exception provides in relevant part that a 

foreign state “shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of 

courts of the United States or of the States in any case . . . in 

which the foreign state has waived its immunity either 

explicitly or by implication.” Id. § 1605(a)(1). The companies 

contend that Spain implicitly waived its immunity by ratifying 

the ICSID and New York Conventions, since those 

conventions provide for enforcement of arbitration awards 

against contracting foreign sovereigns in domestic courts of 

any convention signatory. By mutually agreeing with other 

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19

sovereigns to enforce arbitral awards rendered in disputes to 

which any signatory is a party, the logic goes, Spain waived its 

immunity defense against such an enforcement action in U.S. 

court. 

Embracing that logic, the Second Circuit has held that, by 

ratifying either convention, a country implicitly waives its 

sovereign immunity from suits seeking to enforce awards under 

that convention. See Blue Ridge Invs., LLC v. Republic of 

Argentina, 735 F.3d 72, 84 (2d Cir. 2013) (ICSID Convention); 

Seetransport Wiking Trader v. Navimpex Centrala, 989 F.2d 

572, 578-79 (2d Cir. 1993) (New York Convention). The High 

Court of Australia recently came to a similar conclusion. See 

Kingdom of Spain v. Infrastructure Servs. Luxembourg S.à.r.l. 

[2023] HCA 11 ¶ 79 (holding that Spain consented to the 

jurisdiction of Australian courts “because the relevant 

agreement arose from Spain’s entry into the ICSID 

Convention, which included its agreement as to the 

consequences of an award rendered pursuant to the ICSID 

Convention”). 

The waiver issue remains “unsettled” in our Circuit. 

Process & Indus. Devs. Ltd. v. Fed. Republic of Nigeria 

(P&ID), 27 F.4th 771, 774 (D.C. Cir. 2022). To be sure, we 

have twice approvingly cited the Second Circuit’s decision in

Seetransport. In Creighton Ltd. v. Government of State of 

Qatar, 181 F.3d 118 (D.C. Cir. 1999), we opined in dicta that 

Seetransport “correctly” held that a foreign sovereign waives 

sovereign immunity when it joins the New York Convention. 

Id. at 123. Then, in Taftneft v. Ukraine, 771 F. App’x 9 (D.C. 

Cir. 2019), we held in an unpublished judgment that “a 

sovereign, by signing the New York Convention, waives its 

immunity from arbitration-enforcement actions in other 

signatory states.” Id. at 10. More recently, however, we 

emphasized that “[a]lthough we have favorably cited 

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20

Seetransport and its reasoning in dicta and in an unpublished 

opinion, we have not formally adopted it.” P&ID, 27 F.4th at 

774. And the United States urges against doing so in this case. 

See NextEra U.S. Amicus Br. 19-25. 

We leave clarification of the waiver question for another 

day because we conclude that the district courts have 

jurisdiction under the FSIA’s arbitration exception, to which 

we now turn. 

2.

As relevant here, the FSIA arbitration exception 

withdraws sovereign immunity: 

in any case . . . in which the action is brought, either 

to enforce an agreement made by the foreign state 

with or for the benefit of a private party to submit to 

arbitration all or any differences which have arisen 

or which may arise between the parties with respect 

to a defined legal relationship, whether contractual 

or not, concerning a subject matter capable of 

settlement by arbitration under the laws of the United 

States, or to confirm an award made pursuant to such 

an agreement to arbitrate, if . . . the agreement or 

award is or may be governed by a treaty or other 

international agreement in force for the United States 

calling for the recognition and enforcement of 

arbitral awards. 

28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6). 

To proceed under this clause of the FSIA’s arbitration 

exception, we have explained, a district court must find three 

“jurisdictional facts”: (1) an arbitration agreement, (2) an 

arbitration award, and (3) a treaty potentially governing award

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enforcement. Chevron Corp., 795 F.3d at 204 & n.2; see also 

Stileks, 985 F.3d at 877. In assessing these jurisdictional facts,

we apply a burden-shifting framework. The plaintiff must

initially satisfy a burden of production as to these facts, which 

when met requires the foreign sovereign to “establish the 

absence of the factual basis by a preponderance of the 

evidence.” Chevron, 795 F.3d at 204 (citation omitted). The 

United States objects to Chevron’s burden-shifting framework. 

In its view, the plaintiff, as the party invoking the federal 

court’s jurisdiction, must satisfy both the burden of production 

and persuasion. See NextEra U.S. Amicus Br. 9-10 n.2. We 

are bound by Chevron, however, and would have no occasion

in any event to revisit the issue because the plaintiff companies 

satisfy the burden of persuasion in these cases.

Spain does not dispute that the companies have 

demonstrated arbitration awards and a treaty governing the 

enforcement of the awards in the United States. The only 

jurisdictional fact in dispute here is “the existence of an 

arbitration agreement.” Chevron, 795 F.3d at 204. The word 

“existence” in this context is significant. It is well established 

in this Circuit that disputes about the scope of an arbitration 

agreement, such as whether a binding arbitration agreement 

covers a particular dispute, are not jurisdictional questions 

under the FSIA. See Stileks, 985 F.3d at 878. Scope questions 

instead go to the award’s enforceability on the merits. To make 

the issue jurisdictional, the sovereign must attack the existence 

or validity of the arbitration agreement. 

The first step in the analysis, then, is to identify the 

relevant arbitration agreement. As mentioned, the FSIA 

requires “an agreement made by the foreign state”—either

“with” or “for the benefit” of a private party—to submit certain 

disputes to arbitration. 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6). 

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The most straightforward case is when a sovereign enters 

into an arbitration agreement directly “with” a private investor. 

Consider, for example, Belize Social Development Limited v. 

Government of Belize, 794 F.3d 99 (D.C. Cir. 2015). In that 

case, a private company entered into a business agreement 

containing an arbitration clause with the prime minster of 

Belize, who purported to sign on behalf of the country. Id. at 

100-01. A newly elected prime minster later renounced the 

agreement, claiming that the previous prime minister lacked 

the authority to enter into the agreement. Id. at 101. The 

company nonetheless commenced arbitration, prevailed, and, 

invoking the FSIA’s arbitration exception, sought to enforce 

the resultant award in the United States. Id. Belize resisted 

enforcement on the ground that it did not enter into a valid

arbitration agreement with the company. Id. at 102. We treated 

Belize’s argument as a jurisdictional one—it was attacking the 

validity of the arbitration agreement itsigned “with” the private 

company—but we rejected the argument because the country 

failed to substantiate its claim that the previous prime minister 

“lacked authority to enter the agreement to arbitrate.” Id. at 

103 (emphasis omitted). 

An arbitration provision in an investment treaty works 

differently. In itself, an investment treaty “cannot constitute an 

agreement to arbitrate with an investor. How could it? No 

investor is a party to that Treaty.” BG Grp., PLC v. Republic 

of Argentina, 572 U.S. 25, 50 (2014) (Roberts, C.J., dissenting)

(emphasis added). The investment treaty is instead “a 

contract . . . between nations.” Id. at 37 (majority op.). As 

such, an arbitration provision in an investment treaty can both 

(1) constitute an agreement “for the benefit” of a private party;

and (2) give rise to a separate agreement “with” a private party. 

28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6). Under the plain terms of the FSIA’s 

arbitration exception, either type of agreement may support the 

exercise of jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign. 

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The two agreements are related. First, the arbitration 

provision in an investment treaty may itself be “part of a 

completed agreement between” the signatory countries to

arbitrate certain disputes with investors of the other’s country. 

BG Grp., 572 U.S. at 53 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (emphasis 

omitted). Such a provision is an agreement made “for the 

benefit” of a private party. But it is not a complete agreement 

made “with” a private party. “Something else must happen to 

create an agreement where there was none before.” Id. at 50

(emphasis omitted). To that end, an investment treaty’s 

arbitration provision operates as “a unilateral offer to arbitrate” 

by each sovereign to investors of the other signatory countries. 

Id. (emphasis omitted). A foreign investor seeking to take 

advantage of the investment treaty’s arbitration agreement may 

accept the offer by “filing . . . a notice of arbitration,” id. at 42 

(majority op.), and thereby create a second arbitration 

agreement—this one made by the sovereign “with” a private 

party. 

In so holding, we recognize that “a sovereign’s consent to 

arbitration is important.” Id. at 43. That is especially so where, 

as here, the agreement to arbitrate is the basis of a federal 

court’s authority to exercise jurisdiction over the sovereign. 

An investment treaty may reflect the requisite consent for 

purposes of the FSIA’s arbitration exception. When a 

sovereign makes “an agreement . . . to submit to arbitration” by 

entering an investment treaty with other sovereigns “for the 

benefit of” a class of private investors, it is the treaty that 

manifests the sovereign’s consent to arbitrate. 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1605(a)(6). We therefore may look to the investment treaty 

itself to identify the scope of the sovereign’s consent and the 

relevant agreement for purposes of the FSIA’s arbitration 

exception.

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The investment treaty offers powerful reasons to conclude 

that the standing offer to arbitrate contained in the ECT’s 

arbitration provision extends to EU nationals. The clear terms 

of the ECT’s arbitration provision cover “[d]isputes between a 

Contracting Party and an Investor of another Contracting 

Party.” ECT art. 26(1). Spain is undeniably a “Contracting 

Party,” id. art. 1(2), and the companies are undeniably 

“Investor[s] of another Contracting Party,” id. art. 26(1), 

because the companies are “organized in accordance with the 

law applicable in” the Netherlands or Luxembourg, id. art. 

1(7). And if the ECT’s drafters nonetheless intended to exempt 

intra-EU disputes, they could have done so through a 

“disconnection clause”—a provision stating that the treaty does 

not govern the relationships between EU Member States. 

Indeed, as another ICSID tribunal explained, “during 

negotiation of the ECT, the EU had proposed the insertion of a 

disconnection clause. However, that clause was ultimately 

dropped from the draft treaty.” Vattenfall AB v. Fed. Republic 

of Germany, ICSID Case No. Arb/12/12, Decision on the 

Achmea Issue, ¶¶ 204-05 (Aug. 31, 2018).

For its part, Spain insists that it did not enter into an 

arbitration agreement “with” the companies. It contends that 

the standing offer to arbitrate contained in Article 26 of the 

ECT did not and could not “extend” to the companies because, 

under the Court of Justice’s Komstroy opinion, “the Energy 

Charter Treaty does not permit intra-EU arbitration.” NextEra 

Appellant Br. 43. Therefore, the country concludes, it “could 

not form any arbitration agreement” with the companies as a 

matter of EU law. Id. 31. 

But we need not and do not resolve whether Spain entered 

into separate arbitration agreements “with” private parties 

because we conclude that it entered into an arbitration 

agreement—the Energy Charter Treaty itself—that is arguably

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“for the[ir] benefit.” 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6). Spain does not 

dispute that it is a signatory to the Energy Charter Treaty. And 

it is common ground that, in ratifying the ECT, Spain provided

“unconditional consent” to arbitrate investment disputes with 

the investors of at least some of the other signatory nations. 

ECT art. 26(3)(a). Thus, as a leading scholar has explained, the 

treaty itself “contain[s] the consent of the contracting parties to 

submit disputes involving foreign investment to direct 

investor-state arbitration.” Christopher Dugan et al., InvestorState Arbitration 241 (2008). That agreement is “for the 

benefit” of the signatory’s investors, and therefore satisfies the 

FSIA’s arbitration exception. 

Spain agrees that the ECT was made “for the benefit” of 

some investors—just not those within the European Union. 28 

U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6). Spain’s view, again, is that the standing 

offer to arbitrate contained in Article 26 of the ECT does not 

extend to EU nationals like the companies; it extends only to 

the nationals of ECT signatories outside the European Union, 

like Japan. NextEra Appellant Br. 31, 42-44. That, however, 

is an argument regarding the scope of the Energy Charter 

Treaty, not its existence. It goes to whether the ECT’s 

arbitration provision applies to these disputes. And our binding 

precedent holds that the question “[w]hether the ECT applies 

to [a] dispute” is not “a jurisdictional question under the FSIA.” 

Stileks, 985 F.3d at 878-79 (emphasis omitted) (citing Chevron, 

795 F.3d at 205-06). 

In Chevron and Stileks, the sovereigns argued that they 

never agreed to arbitrate because the scope of the relevant 

investment treaties’ arbitration provisions did not extend to the 

disputes that the companies sought to arbitrate. In each case, 

we held that the sovereign’s argument went to the 

enforceability of the arbitral award on the merits, rather than 

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the district court’s jurisdiction to enforce the award under the 

FSIA. 

Chevron concerned a contractual dispute between 

Chevron, an American company, and the Republic of Ecuador. 

795 F.3d at 202. After Chevron’s lawsuits against Ecuador 

languished in Ecuador’s courts, Chevron commenced 

arbitration and prevailed under an arbitration provision 

contained in a bilateral investment treaty between the United 

States and Ecuador. Id. at 202-03. Under that treaty, “Ecuador 

made a standing offer to American investors to arbitrate 

disputes involving investments that existed on or after the 

treaty’s effective date.” Id. at 202. Invoking the FSIA’s 

arbitration exception, Chevron petitioned to enforce the award 

in the United States under the New York Convention. Id. at 

203. Ecuador argued the arbitration exception did not apply 

because its “offer to arbitrate in the [investment treaty] [did 

not] encompass[] Chevron’s breach of contract claims.” Id. at 

205. “According to Ecuador, if Chevron’s claims [were] not 

covered by the [investment treaty], then Ecuador never agreed 

to arbitrate with Chevron, and the District Court consequently 

lacked jurisdiction.” Id. The panel rejected that argument, 

holding that “[t]he dispute over whether the lawsuits were 

‘investments’ for purposes of the treaty” is not a jurisdictional 

question under the FSIA; rather it “is properly considered as 

part of review under the New York Convention.” Id. at 206. 

Stileks applied the reasoning of Chevron to the Energy 

Charter Treaty’s arbitration provision. A Ukrainian company 

called Energoalliance contracted to sell electricity to the 

Republic of Moldova. 985 F.3d at 874-75. But Energoalliance 

did not sell directly to Moldova; instead, it sold the electricity 

to a British Virgin Islands entity called Derimen Properties, 

which in turn provided the electricity to Moldova. Id. at 875. 

When Moldova fell behind on payments, “Derimen assigned 

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the debt to Energoalliance,” which commenced arbitration 

under Article 26 of the Energy Charter Treaty. Id. 

Energoalliance secured an arbitral award and sought to enforce 

the award in the United States under the New York 

Convention. Id. 

Like Chevron, Energoalliance invoked the FSIA’s 

arbitration exception. Id. at 877. And, like Ecuador, Moldova 

argued that the arbitration exception did not apply. It reasoned 

that “Derimen’s claim against [Moldova] was not an 

investment within the meaning of the ECT because Derimen, a 

[British Virgin Islands] entity, was not a qualifying investor.” 

Id. at 878. So, “[a]lthough the ECT may establish that Moldova 

agreed to arbitrate certain disputes, it does not prove that it 

agreed to arbitrate this particular dispute.” Id. Following 

Chevron, the panel in Stileks held “that the arbitrability of a 

dispute is not a jurisdictional question under the FSIA,” and it 

“construe[d] Moldova’s arbitrability argument as a defense 

under [the New York] Convention.” Id.

What was true in Stileks is true here. Like Moldova, Spain 

argues that the ECT’s arbitration provision does not cover the 

companies’ claims. Moldova said that was because 

Energoalliance’s claims were not covered investments under 

the ECT; Spain argues it is because the EU companies are not 

covered investors under the ECT. Both claims go to the scope 

of the ECT’s arbitration provision—in the former case, which 

disputes are covered; in the latter, which investors are covered. 

In Stileks, we squarely held that the question “[w]hether the 

ECT applies to the dispute” is not “a jurisdictional question 

under the FSIA.” 985 F.3d at 878-79. It does not matter why

the ECT may not apply to the dispute. For jurisdictional 

purposes, the FSIA’s arbitration exception requires that the 

arbitral tribunal “purported to make an award pursuant to the 

ECT, not that it in fact did so.” Id. at 878. Therefore, the 

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companies showed Spain’s agreement to arbitrate, for purposes 

of the FSIA, by “produc[ing] copies of the ECT.” Id. at 877. 

Two limits of our holding bear emphasis. First, not every 

arbitration provision in an investment treaty represents a 

completed agreement “for the benefit” of a private party. 28 

U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6). That is because not all investment treaties 

“supply the requisite state consent to arbitration.” Dugan, 

Investor-State Arbitration at 241. Some investment treaties 

contain “a mere agreement to agree”; they provide, for 

example, that a dispute “shall upon the agreement by both 

parties be submitted for arbitration.” Id. at 237 (quoting 

Agreement Between the Government of Sweden and the 

Government of Malaysia Concerning the Mutual Protection of 

Investments art. 6, Mar. 3, 1979, 1254 U.N.T.S. 315). Unlike 

the ECT’s arbitration provision, such a provision does not itself

“constitute consent to arbitration by the States concerned.” Id.

(internal quotation omitted). 

Second, we hold only that the district courts have 

jurisdiction to enforce these arbitration awards. That does not 

mean they must or should do so. By basing jurisdiction on the 

Energy Charter Treaty as an agreement “for the benefit” of 

foreign investors, we do not address the merits question 

whether that Treaty’s arbitration provision extends to EU 

nationals and thus whether Spain ultimately entered into legally 

valid agreements with the companies. 

Our holding that the FSIA’s arbitration exception 

authorizes enforcement of these arbitral awards makes it 

unnecessary for us to reach another issue that Blasket raised in 

an amicus brief it filed in NextEra and 9REN. The FSIA grants 

sovereign immunity to foreign states, but that grant is explicitly 

“[s]ubject to existing international agreements to which the 

United States [was] a party” before FSIA’s enactment in 1976. 

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28 U.S.C. § 1604. Because the United States ratified the ICSID 

Convention in 1966, the FSIA’s carve-out for “existing 

international agreements,” id., may include that convention, 

depending on whether it “expressly conflict[s] with the 

[FSIA’s] immunity provisions.” Argentine Republic v. 

Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 488 U.S. 428, 442 (1989)

(formatting modified). Since we hold that district courts have 

jurisdiction to enforce these awards under the FSIA’s 

arbitration exception, we see no express conflict between the 

FSIA’s immunity provisions and the ICSID Convention. See 

Mobil Cerro Negro, Ltd. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venez., 863 

F.3d 96, 113-14 (2d Cir. 2017).

In sum, we take no position on the ultimate enforceability 

of these awards. We hold only that district courts have 

jurisdiction to enforce them under the FSIA’s arbitration 

exception. 

Finally, Spain contends that, even if the district courts had 

jurisdiction under the FSIA, they should have alternatively 

dismissed the petitions based on the doctrine of forum non 

conveniens. As Spain acknowledges, however, binding circuit 

precedent dictates that “forum non conveniens is not available 

in proceedings to confirm a foreign arbitral award because only 

U.S. courts can attach foreign commercial assets found within 

the United States.” See Stileks, 985 F.3d at 876 n.1 (citing TMR 

Energy Ltd. v. State Prop. Fund of Ukraine, 411 F.3d 296, 303-

04 (D.C. Cir. 2005)). We therefore reject that challenge.

B.

We now consider the propriety of the district court’s antisuit injunctions in NextEra and 9REN. After asserting 

jurisdiction over the disputes, the district court preliminarily 

enjoined Spain from pursuing relief in the Netherlands or 

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Luxembourg that would interfere with the district court’s 

jurisdiction. 

On appeal, Spain contends that the injunctions were an 

abuse of discretion. Spain’s primary argument is that the 

injunctions violate the principle of international comity—i.e., 

“the recognition which one nation allows within its territory to 

the legislative, executive or judicial acts of another nation.” 

Usoyan v. Republic of Turkey, 6 F.4th 31, 48 (D.C. Cir. 2021) 

(quoting Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U.S. 113, 164 (1895)). In an 

amicus brief, the Netherlands stresses the same theme. See

NextEra Netherlands Amicus Br. 15-17. As does the United 

States, which submitted an amicus brief and participated in oral 

argument at our invitation. See NextEra U.S. Amicus Br. 25-

30. 

We agree that the injunctions were an abuse of discretion. 

We start with some context. There are two types of antisuit injunctions: offensive (seeking to defeat another court’s 

jurisdiction) and defensive (seeking to protect the ordering 

court’s own jurisdiction). Some examples are useful to 

understand the difference. Suppose X sues Y in Country A. If 

Y turns to courts in Country B to obtain an injunction against 

the proceeding in Country A, that’s an offensive anti-suit

injunction: “Its only purpose is to destroy [Country A’s] 

jurisdiction.” Laker Airways Ltd., 731 F.2d at 933 n.81. If X 

responds by seeking in Country A an injunction to put a stop to 

the Country B proceeding, that’s a defensive anti-suit

injunction: It is “designed to protect [Country A’s] jurisdiction 

to proceed with the case.” Id. 

We affirmed a defensive anti-suit injunction in Laker 

Airways Ltd. v. Sabena, Belgian World Airlines, 731 F.2d 909 

(D.C. Cir. 1984). There, British company Laker Airways sued 

other British, American, and foreign companies in U.S. district 

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court for anticompetitive behavior. See id. at 917-18. The 

British and some of the foreign defendant airlines went to 

British court and obtained an offensive anti-suit injunction, 

prohibiting Laker from proceeding in the U.S. court. Id. at 918. 

Laker responded by preemptively seeking in U.S. court 

defensive anti-suit injunctions against the U.S. airlines and the

two foreign airlines that had not yet sought anti-suit relief in 

British court. Id. 

The Laker district court granted the defensive anti-suit

injunctions against those airlines, preventing them from 

“taking any action before a foreign court or governmental 

authority that would interfere with the district court’s 

jurisdiction over the matters alleged in the complaint.” Id. at 

919. Those foreign airlines—one Dutch, the other Belgian—

appealed. Id. at 919, 954 n.175. They did not “dispute the 

power of the United States District Court to issue the 

injunction.” Id. at 934. Rather, they argued that the district 

court abused its discretion because the injunction “violate[d] 

their right to take part in the ‘parallel’ actions commenced in 

the English courts,” in contravention of “international 

principles of comity.” Id. at 921. They also argued that the 

injunction “ignored Britain’s ‘paramount right’ to apply British 

law to Laker, which is a British subject.” Id. 

A divided panel affirmed the injunction. Id. at 916. The 

majority emphasized that an anti-suit injunction should issue 

only after a case-specific evaluation of the equities makes clear 

that it is necessary “to prevent an irreparable miscarriage of 

justice.” Id. at 927. Anything less than “the most compelling 

circumstances” is not enough. Id. 

The Laker panel approved the injunction because “the sole 

purpose of the English proceeding [was] to terminate the 

American action.” Id. at 930 (emphasis in original). It ruled 

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32

that the “injunctions of the United Kingdom courts [were] not 

entitled to comity” because the “action before the United 

Kingdom courts [was] specifically intended to interfere with 

and terminate Laker’s United States antitrust suit.” Id. at 938. 

In other words, the “district court’s anti-suit injunction was 

purely defensive,” whereas the “English injunction [was] 

purely offensive.” Id. The majority also reasoned that the 

district court exhibited comity by offering to narrow the scope 

of the injunction to permit the foreign airlines “to proceed in 

Great Britain without leaving them free to secure orders which 

would interfere with the district court’s pending litigation.” Id. 

at 942. The dissenting opinion would have held the injunction 

too broad but would have approved an injunction that 

authorized the foreign airlines to seek declaratory relief. Id. at 

958 (Starr, J., dissenting). 

Here, the district court took Laker as its starting point. 

NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 215. (Because the district court’s 

analysis is substantially the same in NextEra and 9REN, we cite 

only to the published opinion in NextEra.) The district court 

concluded that anti-suit injunctions were warranted because, 

like the injunction in Laker, the injunctions requested here were 

defensive anti-suit injunctions. The court found that Spain’s 

“express and primary purpose” for initiating the Dutch and 

Luxemburgish suits was to terminate the ongoing district court 

actions. Id. at 215-16. And the district court permitted Spain 

to continue to seek declaratory relief to “vindicat[e] its 

interpretation of EU law.” Id. at 217; cf. Laker Airways, 731 

F.2d at 958 (Starr, J., dissenting). After considering the 

equitable factors Laker identifies as bearing on the propriety of 

anti-suit injunctions, the district court applied the traditional 

four-factor test for preliminary injunctions. See NextEra, 656 

F. Supp. 3d at 214-21. It then issued the anti-suit injunctions, 

prohibiting Spain from pursuing relief in the Netherlands or 

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Luxembourg that would interfere with the district court’s 

jurisdiction. See NextEra J.A. 833-34. 

Despite the district court’s careful analysis, we conclude 

that it abused its discretion in issuing the anti-suit injunctions. 

A district court abuses its discretion when it “fail[s] to consider 

a relevant factor” or “relie[s] on an improper factor.” Standing 

Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 985 F.3d 1032, 

1053 (D.C. Cir. 2021) (quotation marks omitted); see also

Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv., 586 U.S. 9, 25 

(2018) (explaining that, on abuse-of-discretion review, a court 

must ensure that the decisionmaker “appropriately consider[s] 

all of the relevant factors”). A district court also abuses its 

discretion if, “upon a weighing of the relevant factors,” it 

commits “a clear error of judgment.” Truckers United for 

Safety v. Mead, 329 F.3d 891, 894 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (quotation 

marks omitted). And, of course, a district court abuses its 

discretion when it commits a “material error of law.” 

Musgrave v. Warner, 104 F.4th 355, 365 (D.C. Cir. 2024) 

(quotation marks omitted). 

Before issuing an anti-suit injunction, a court “should 

focus on (1) whether an action in the foreign jurisdiction 

prevents United States jurisdiction or threatens a vital United 

States policy, and (2) whether the domestic interests outweigh 

concerns of international comity.” Goss Int’l Corp. v. Man 

Roland Druckmaschinen Aktiengesellschaft, 491 F.3d 355, 361 

& n.4 (8th Cir. 2007) (citing Laker, 731 F.2d at 909-59). The 

district court made two errors in its evaluation of these factors.1

 

1 As mentioned, in addition to evaluating these specific antisuit injunction factors, the district court also considered the 

four traditional injunction factors. Other circuits appear to be 

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34

First, the district court did not address the fact that the antisuit injunctions run against a foreign sovereign. “[A] district 

court’s power to sanction or exercise other forms of judicial 

control over a foreign sovereign is not coterminous with its 

power to regulate or punish other litigants.” Republic of 

Philippines v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 43 F.3d 65, 72-73 (3d 

Cir. 1994). In general, anti-suit injunctions strain the “crucial 

principles of comity that regulate and moderate the social and 

economic intercourse between independent nations.” Laker, 

731 F.2d at 937. An anti-suit injunction against a foreign 

sovereign puts these comity concerns “near their peak.” BAE 

Sys. Tech. Sol. & Servs., Inc. v. Republic of Korea’s Def. 

Acquisition Program Admin., 884 F.3d 463, 480 (4th Cir. 

2018). 

The district court reasoned that anti-suit injunctions were 

justified by the need to protect its jurisdiction to enforce 

NextEra’s and 9REN’s awards. While such a concern could 

support an injunction against private parties, see, e.g., Laker, 

731 F.2d at 927-31, it alone does not account for all of the 

divided on whether those factors apply to anti-suit injunctions.

Compare In re Millenium Seacarriers, Inc., 458 F.3d 92, 97-98 

(2d Cir. 2006) (per curiam) (evaluating traditional injunction 

factors in addition to equitable factors specific to the propriety 

of an anti-suit injunction), with, e.g., Goss, 491 F.3d at 361 n.4.

(holding anti-suit injunction factors displace traditional 

injunction factors). Because we conclude that the district court 

erred in its evaluation of the anti-suit injunction factors, we 

need not reach the question whether, in addition to those 

factors, a district court considering whether to issue an anti-suit 

injunction must also consider the four traditional injunction

factors.

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35

implicated interests when relief is sought against a foreign 

sovereign. 

The injunctions here would “impinge on the sovereignty” 

of both the Spanish government to litigate and the Dutch and 

Luxembourgish courts to decide an issue that Spain and the 

European Union view as an important question of European 

Union law. BAE, 884 F.3d at 480; see NextEra Eur. Comm’n 

Amicus Br. 11-12. 

These are not abstract concerns. “Actions against foreign 

sovereigns in our courts raise sensitive issues concerning the 

foreign relations of the United States,” Verlinden B.V. v. Cent. 

Bank of Nigeria, 461 U.S. 480, 493 (1983), and can have 

serious “diplomatic implications,” Republic of Sudan v. 

Harrison, 587 U.S. 1, 19 (2019). Indeed, the United States 

warns that the injunctions here “ha[ve] the potential to cause

significant harm to the United States.” NextEra U.S. Amicus 

Br. 29. That is because “there is a real risk that issuance of an 

antisuit injunction in cases like this could prompt reciprocal 

injunctions against the United States.” Id. at 30. 

It is thus no surprise that an anti-suit injunction against a 

foreign sovereign is virtually unprecedented. The injunction in 

Laker ran against private companies, and we emphasized there 

were “[n]o facts . . . presented . . . suggesting that the antitrust 

suit adversely affects the operations of foreign governments.” 

Laker, 731 F.2d at 942. And, in sustaining anti-suit injunctions 

against private entities, other courts also stress the fact that 

foreign sovereigns are not involved in the lawsuit. See, e.g., E. 

& J. Gallo Winery v. Andina Licores S.A., 446 F.3d 984, 994 

(9th Cir. 2006) (“There is no indication that the government of 

Ecuador is involved in the litigation.”). Indeed, the only case 

that we could find in which an appellate court was presented 

with a similar injunction deemed the injunction an abuse of 

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36

discretion because the district court “failed to recognize [its]

extraordinarily intrusive nature.” See Westinghouse Elec. Co., 

43 F.3d at 80-81 (vacating injunction against foreign sovereign 

prohibiting the sovereign from harassing witnesses who had 

testified against it in a suit it had brought in federal court in the 

United States).

The district court thus erred in issuing the injunctions 

without considering Spain’s sovereign status.

Our partially dissenting colleague does not dispute that 

Spain’s status as a foreign sovereign is an important part of the 

problem. She concludes, however, that the district court did 

reckon with “Spain’s status as a sovereign nation.” Partial 

Dissent 11. For support, she points to the district court’s 

statement that general “[c]onsiderations of comity” weigh 

against the anti-suit injunctions. Id. (quoting NextEra, 656 F. 

Supp. 3d at 216-17). But that is true of all foreign anti-suit

injunctions, regardless of whether they target private entities or 

foreign sovereigns. 

Our dissenting colleague also suggests that we cannot 

consider the views of the United States because they were “not 

before the district court when the anti-suit injunctions were 

litigated.” Id. at 14-15. She contends that, at most, we “should 

remand for the district court to consider the[] [United States’ 

views] in the first instance.” Id. at 15. We disagree. 

For one thing, the views of the United States were before 

the district court when the anti-suit injunctions were litigated. 

In opposing the injunctions before the district court, Spain 

pointed to the United States’ amicus brief in BAE System 

Technology Solution & Services, 884 F.3d 463, a 2018 case in 

which the Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court’s denial of an 

anti-suit injunction against the Republic of Korea. See NextEra 

ECF No. 81 at 15. In a portion of the amicus brief that Spain 

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37

quoted to the district court, the United States stressed—in 

language it echoes in its brief in this case—that “an antisuit 

injunction, barring a foreign sovereign from invoking the 

jurisdiction of its own courts, would be a truly extraordinary 

remedy with significant consequences for international comity, 

and its issuance could have significant negative consequences 

for the U.S. government.” See Brief for the United States as 

Amicus Curiae, BAE Sys. Tech. Sol. & Servs., 884 F.3d 463

(4th Cir. 2018) (No. 17-1070), 2018 WL 551803, at *2; cf. 

NextEra U.S. Amicus Br. 25 (“Enjoining a foreign sovereign 

from bringing suit in a foreign court is an extraordinary remedy 

that would rarely (and possibly never) be justified.”). So, the 

district court was aware of the United States’ position on the 

propriety of anti-suit injunctions against foreign sovereigns, at 

least as of 2018. 

If the interests of the United States were not clear to the 

district court, it could have invited the United States to file an 

amicus brief to clarify its position. Indeed, no party expressed 

surprise at, or objected to, our invitation to the United States to 

participate as amicus curiae; all undoubtedly recognize that 

U.S. courts addressing matters touching foreign affairs give 

substantial respect to the views of the United States 

government. Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law 

§ 112, cmt. c (Am. L. Inst. 2024). And, although they took the 

opportunity to respond to the views of the United States, the 

companies did not request that, if we were unable to sustain the 

injunctions, we should remand them to the district court. 

In any event, our holding does not turn on the views of the 

United States. Those views are important, to be sure. But, even 

without them, we would conclude that an anti-suit injunction 

against a foreign sovereign presents more serious comity 

concerns than one against a private entity. The district court’s 

failure to recognize that difference was an error. So, we would 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 37 of 63
38

vacate and remand the injunctions even if the United States had

not filed an amicus brief in this case asking us to do so.

Second, with comity concerns near their peak, the district 

court failed to identify domestic interests strong enough to 

warrant the anti-suit injunctions. 

In approving the injunction in Laker, we emphasized that 

the injunction served substantial interests of the United States. 

731 F.2d at 922-26. Although the enjoined party there was a 

foreign corporation, it was in liquidation and its “principal 

creditors [were] Americans.” Id. at 924. In addition, the case 

implicated the enforcement of American antitrust laws, which 

would have “directly benefit[ed] American consumers,” since 

the anticompetitive behavior was alleged to “raise fares for 

United States passengers.” Id. 

The only domestic interest the district court identified here

is a public interest in encouraging arbitration. NextEra, 656 F. 

Supp. 3d at 221. That important interest is codified at 22 

U.S.C. § 1650a(a), the federal statute implementing the ICSID 

Convention. Under that Convention, the United States must 

open the doors of its courthouses to foreign investors seeking 

to enforce such awards. But neither the treaty nor the statute 

requires the United States to remove obstacles in other 

countries that might make it harder for foreign investors to find 

their way to our courts. 

These cases are a far cry from Laker. The United States 

has no direct interest in the underlying disputes between the 

Dutch and Luxembourgish companies and Spain. There is no 

suggestion that U.S. law governs that underlying dispute. Nor 

does the United States have a direct interest in the interpretation 

of the Energy Charter Treaty, a treaty to which it does not 

belong. The European Union asserts that “the question of 

Article 26’s intra-EU application is a matter internal to the EU 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 38 of 63
39

and does not implicate the rights of third countries that are also 

contracting parties to the Energy Charter Treaty.” NextEra 

Eur. Comm’n Amicus Br. 17; see NextEra U.S. Amicus Br. 28 

(noting with approval that “[t]he submission of the EU explains 

that these questions are of extraordinary importance to that 

body because they ‘implicat[e] the structure of the EU legal 

order, the role and jurisdiction of EU courts, the interpretation 

of EU law by non-EU adjudicatory bodies, and the future of the 

Energy Charter Treaty and investor-State arbitration within the 

EU.’” (quoting NextEra Eur. Comm’n Amicus Br. 26)). 

Our partially dissenting colleague suggests that we “give 

insufficient weight to the United States’ obligation to uphold 

the ICSID Convention and its strong interests in doing so.” 

Partial Dissent 17. But the United States itself tells us those 

interests “are far outweighed by the interests in allowing the 

foreign litigation to proceed.” NextEra U.S. Amicus Br. 25. 

In any event, we disagree that Spain’s tactics threaten to 

“undermine[] the whole process envisioned by the ICSID 

Convention.” Partial Dissent 17. After all, the ICSID 

Convention explicitly offers recourse to signatory countries 

objecting that another signatory country is improperly 

interfering with ICSID enforcement proceedings. Under 

Article 64, a signatory country may refer a dispute “concerning 

the interpretation or application of this Convention” to the 

International Court of Justice. ICSID Convention art. 64. If 

the Netherlands or Luxembourg concluded that Spain’s 

treatment of their nationals was in violation of the ICSID 

Convention, they could refer the dispute to the International 

Court of Justice. Our colleague suggests the ICSID 

Convention’s remedy is too “cumbersome,” but that is neither 

here nor there: It is the remedy “envisioned by the ICSID 

Convention.” Partial Dissent 17-18. Not only has the 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 39 of 63
40

Netherlands declined to pursue that remedy, it urges us to 

vacate the injunctions. See Netherlands Amicus Br. 17. 

That last point bears emphasis. The companies argue that

Spain is breaching the commitments it made to the Netherlands

and Luxembourg in the Energy Charter Treaty and the ICSID 

Convention to arbitrate disputes with their nationals before an 

ICSID tribunal. If the Netherlands or Luxembourg agreed with 

the companies, they might try to put a stop to Spain’s tactics. 

They could refer the issue to the International Court of Justice. 

Or their courts could simply deny Spain’s requests for anti-suit

relief. The countries have not taken these steps, likely because

they agree with Spain that the Energy Charter Treaty “cannot 

and never could serve as a legal basis for intra-EU arbitration 

proceedings.” NextEra 28(j) Letter dated July 9, 2024. In other 

words, those countries do not understand the agreement they 

made with Spain to obligate Spain to arbitrate with their 

nationals. One reason the companies may struggle to enforce 

their arbitration awards is that the awards are based on an 

interpretation of an international treaty that the treaty signers

reject. 

One final note about what is—and is not—at stake with 

these anti-suit injunctions. Our dissenting colleague laments 

that, without the injunctions, “[o]ur affirmance of the district 

court’s jurisdictional rulings is a hollow victory for the 

[companies]” because they “will be enjoined by foreign courts 

from ever confirming their hard-won awards.” Partial Dissent 

21. But the injunctions are one small piece of a complex 

international puzzle. The injunctions might help the companies 

confirm their awards, but—as the district court made clear—

they would not stop Spain from continuing to seek declaratory 

and monetary relief in foreign courts that could ultimately 

prevent the companies from securing the money they seek. See

NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 217. 

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41

For example, in addition to seeking an injunction, Spain 

asked the Dutch court for a monetary award of “[€]300 million 

or an amount equivalent to the amount obtained by NextEra . . . 

through the execution, whichever is lower.” NextEra J.A. 800. 

Even if we sustained the injunctions, Spain would be free to

pursue an order from the Dutch courts requiring the companies 

to return whatever money NextEra obtained through this 

enforcement action. Indeed, Laker itself recognized that 

foreign courts “can sanction their citizens for resorting to 

United States . . . remedies.” 731 F.2d at 936. One way or 

another, then, the companies will have to reckon with their 

national courts and EU law. The injunctions might help the 

companies confirm their arbitral awards, but they would not 

help them keep the awards. At the very least, all agree that is a 

matter of EU law. 

In sum, the district court’s careful analysis overlooked the 

fact that anti-suit relief was sought against a foreign sovereign 

and the nature of the United States’ ICSID obligations. In so 

holding, we do not categorically foreclose anti-suit injunctions 

against foreign sovereigns. In this context and on this record,

however, we must vacate the anti-suit injunctions.

III.

We hold that the district courts have jurisdiction to confirm 

these arbitration awards under the FSIA’s arbitration 

exception, and that the preliminary injunctions in NextEra and 

9REN are an abuse of discretion. We therefore affirm in part

and reverse in part in NextEra; reverse in 9REN and Blasket; 

and remand for further proceedings. 

So ordered. 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 41 of 63
PAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part: 

I concur with the court’s holding that the district court has 

jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to 

hear the instant cases and to confirm the arbitration awards at 

issue. But I believe that the majority errs in vacating the antisuit injunctions imposed by the district court. I disagree with 

the majority’s approach to applying the abuse-of-discretion 

standard of review: The majority appears to perform its own 

balancing of interests and to substitute its own judgments for 

those of the district court. In so doing, the majority opinion 

gives insufficient weight to the United States’ interest in 

upholding the ICSID Convention, overlooks Spain’s lack of 

comity and apparent bad faith, and ignores the district court’s 

finding that the injunctions were necessary to prevent 

irreparable harm to NextEra and 9REN. Because reasonable 

minds evidently differ on how to weigh the competing factors, 

the majority’s conclusions are, at best, only arguably correct. 

Thus, the applicable standard of review requires us to uphold 

the district court’s discretionary calls, which were within its 

“range of choice” and were “not influenced by any mistake of 

law.” Morrissey v. Mayorkas, 17 F.4th 1150, 1156 (D.C. Cir. 

2021). I therefore respectfully dissent as to Part II.B of the 

court’s opinion. 

I. 

A. 

The Energy Charter Treaty (“ECT”) is a multilateral treaty 

that facilitates foreign investments in the energy sectors of 

participating nations. See Maj. Op. 8–9. A key feature of the 

ECT is its guarantee to foreign investors that the participating 

nations will agree to resolve disputes arising from the foreign 

investments in a neutral arbitral forum. See id. at 9. 

Specifically, the ECT provides that each nation “gives its 

unconditional consent to the submission of [a] dispute to 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 42 of 63
2 

international arbitration.” See Energy Charter Treaty 16 art. 

26(3), Dec. 17, 1994, 2080 U.N.T.S. 95. An investor who 

elects to arbitrate can proceed before the International Centre 

for Settlement of Investment Disputes (“ICSID”). Id. at art. 

26(3)–(5). The ICSID Convention is a multilateral treaty that 

authorizes ICSID “to convene arbitration, mediation, and factfinding panels to address disputes between international 

investors and Contracting States.” Valores Mundiales, S.L. v. 

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 87 F.4th 510, 514 (D.C. Cir. 

2023). Signatory nations are obligated to enforce any 

arbitration award conferred by an ICSID tribunal as if the 

award “were a final judgment of a court in that [signatory 

nation].” See ICSID Convention, art. 54; see also Maj. Op. 15; 

22 U.S.C. § 1650a(a). 

The ECT’s arbitration provision, which includes the 

promise of recourse under the ICSID framework, plays an 

important role in encouraging foreign investments: It 

ameliorates the risk to private companies of doing business 

with a sovereign nation by ensuring that there will be a fair 

procedure for resolving any disputes arising from the 

companies’ investments. Spain is a signatory of the ICSID 

Convention, and at the relevant time was a signatory of the 

ECT. The United States is a signatory of the ICSID 

Convention. 

NextEra and 9REN (the “Investors”) are energy 

companies from the Netherlands and Luxembourg, 

respectively. See Maj. Op. 10. They both invested in the 

Spanish energy sector with the understanding that they could 

avail themselves of the arbitration provisions in the ECT and 

the ICSID Convention if necessary. Spain accepted the capital 

investments made by NextEra and 9REN, but nevertheless 

broke its promise to provide energy subsidies that would have 

benefited the Investors. See id. 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 43 of 63
3 

In response to Spain’s breach of its commitments, NextEra 

and 9REN followed the procedures outlined in the ECT and the 

ICSID Convention. See Maj. Op. 10. They participated in 

lengthy arbitration proceedings with Spain, in which all of 

Spain’s arguments were fully aired. The Investors each 

secured significant monetary awards that were upheld pursuant 

to ICSID’s internal appeal process. See id. at 14–15. They then 

sought to confirm their arbitral awards in a United States 

district court, as permitted by the ICSID Convention. See id.

at 15. The district court ruled that it had jurisdiction to confirm 

the arbitral awards. See NextEra Energy Glob. Holdings B.V. 

v. Kingdom of Spain, 656 F. Supp. 3d 201, 214 (D.D.C. 2023); 

9REN Holding S.À.R.L. v. Kingdom of Spain, Civ. No. 19-

01871, 2023 WL 2016933, at *3 (D.D.C. Feb. 15, 2023). We 

unanimously affirm the district court’s jurisdictional rulings 

and remand for further proceedings so that the Investors may 

litigate the confirmation of their awards. But all the Investors’ 

efforts to date may have been for naught because the majority 

opinion vacates the district court’s anti-suit injunctions, which 

protected the Investors’ ability to enforce their arbitral awards 

under the ICSID framework. 

B. 

Spain has argued in this case and elsewhere that it is not 

obligated to arbitrate with EU nationals — such as NextEra and 

9REN — because the EU’s highest court has prohibited EUmember nations from making treaty commitments to arbitrate 

intra-EU disputes. See Maj. Op. 24 (citing Republic of 

Moldova v. Komstroy LLC, ECLI:EU:C:2021:655 (Sept. 2, 

2021)). Based on the EU court’s ruling, Spain claims that it 

could not have lawfully entered into arbitration agreements 

with the Investors, even though Spain became a signatory to 

the ECT and the ICSID Convention long before that ruling was 

made. See id. at 10, 13, 25. Spain advanced those arguments 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 44 of 63
4 

to oppose jurisdiction in this forum, even though dozens of 

arbitral tribunals and non-EU courts have ruled against Spain 

when presented with similar claims. See Int’l Scholars Amicus 

Br. 13 n.7 (collecting examples); Infrastructure Servs. 

Luxembourg S.À.R.L v. Kingdom of Spain, [2023] EWHC 1226 

(Comm) ¶ 67 (decision by the English High Court of Justice 

holding that “[t]he EU treaties do not trump [Spain’s 

obligations under the ICSID Convention and the ECT], nor do 

they override the relevant domestic law mechanism in the 

United Kingdom”). Notably, Spain currently owes more than 

$1.3 billion for sixteen unpaid arbitral awards won by 

investors. See Int’l Scholars Amicus Br. 30 n.23 (citing Nikos 

Lavranos, Updated Report concerning Spain’s Compliance 

with Investment Treaty Arbitration Awards 2023, Int’l L. 

Compliance (June 2023)). 

In these cases, faced with the prospect of losing on the 

merits yet again, Spain resorted to a procedural gambit to block 

the Investors from using the ICSID framework to enforce their 

arbitral awards: Spain sued NextEra and 9REN in their home 

countries to enjoin the Investors from confirming their awards 

in the United States. In the Dutch action, Spain sought an order 

requiring NextEra to “take all actions necessary to suspend the 

proceedings currently pending before the United States District 

Court . . . under penalty of a daily payment of EUR 30,000 for 

each day.” NextEra J.A. 798. Spain also requested an 

injunction prohibiting NextEra from trying to enforce its award 

anywhere in the world. Id. at 798–99. Likewise, Spain asked 

the Luxembourgish court to order 9REN to “cease any 

enforcement of the Arbitral Award” or be subject to a penalty 

of EUR 100,000 per day. 9REN J.A. 411. 

The extreme remedies requested by Spain in the foreign 

actions were designed to deter the Investors from exercising 

their rights under the ECT and the ICSID Convention — even 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 45 of 63
5 

though Spain signed those treaties and thereby consented to the 

procedures followed by the Investors. To escape its obligations 

under the governing treaties and arbitrations, Spain would like 

to re-litigate the issues already resolved by the ICSID arbitral 

panels in friendlier forums in the EU: Spain apparently 

believes that because the Netherlands and Luxembourg are EU 

countries, their courts will be more receptive to Spain’s 

arguments, which are based on a ruling of the EU Court of 

Justice. In short, Spain is forum-shopping. 

In a pair of well-reasoned opinions, the district court 

granted the Investors’ requests to enjoin Spain from pursuing 

anti-suit injunctions in the Netherlands and Luxembourg that 

would interfere with the district court’s jurisdiction to provide 

relief to the Investors. See NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 214; 

9REN, 2023 WL 2016933, at *7.1 The district court 

emphasized that the express purpose of Spain’s foreign 

lawsuits was “to terminate [the U.S.] action[s]” by “ordering 

[the Investors] to withdraw [their] suit[s], imposing penalties 

upon failure to do so, and issuing [] worldwide injunction[s] 

preventing [the Investors] from taking any action to confirm 

the Award[s].” NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 216 (emphasis in 

original). Moreover, Spain did not provide “any prior notice” 

that it was seeking the injunctions, “apparently planning to 

simply later advise the court of the ‘fait accompli . . . which 

would have virtually eliminated the court’s effective 

jurisdiction over [the Investors’] facially valid claim[s].’” Id. 

(first and second alteration in original) (quoting Laker Airways 

Ltd. v. Sabena, Belgian World Airlines, 731 F.2d 909, 930–31 

(D.C. Cir. 1984)). Noting that U.S. courts have a “duty to 

protect their legitimately conferred jurisdiction to the extent 

1

 The district court’s opinions in NextEra and 9REN are 

substantially identical in their analysis of the issues, and I therefore 

cite only to the published NextEra opinion. 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 46 of 63
6 

necessary to provide full justice to litigants,” the court 

determined that these “most compelling circumstances” 

required it to “to meet the force of Spain’s attempt to deprive 

this court of jurisdiction.” Id. at 215–17 (first and second 

quoting Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 927). 

In reaching that conclusion, the district court considered 

Spain’s “strenuous[]” arguments that “principles of comity” 

precluded the issuance of the injunctions, while acknowledging 

its duty to take Spain’s claims “seriously.” NextEra, 656 F. 

Supp. 3d at 216 (quoting Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 937). But 

the district court refused to “countenance [Spain’s] hypocrisy,” 

observing that Spain’s “claims of comity . . . come burdened 

with the failure of Spain to recognize comity,” and that “[t]he 

comity concerns that Spain laments are of its own making.” Id. 

at 217 (cleaned up). And further, the court held that “relief 

against Spain is warranted in the form of a preliminary 

injunction” because “there is a public interest in encouraging 

arbitration and the enforcement of international arbitration law 

as an efficient means of settling disputes,” as well as “an 

expectation on the part of Congress that actions to enforce 

ICSID awards would not be protracted, much less permanently 

halted by collateral attacks in foreign courts.” Id. at 217, 221 

(cleaned up). Finally, the district court found that the Investors 

would be irreparably harmed if it did not issue the injunctions 

because the Investors would likely be permanently enjoined 

from enforcing their awards. Id. at 220. The district court 

therefore held that the balance of equities “strongly” favored 

the Investors. Id. But the court tailored its relief to preserve 

Spain’s ability to seek a declaration from the Dutch and 

Luxembourgish courts “vindicating its interpretation of EU 

law.” Id. at 217. 

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7 

II. 

It is undisputed that the district court had the authority to 

issue the anti-suit injunctions at issue in these cases. “It is well 

settled that . . . American courts have power to control the 

conduct of persons subject to their jurisdiction to the extent of 

forbidding them from suing in foreign jurisdictions.” Laker 

Airways, 731 F.2d at 926; see also BAE Sys. Tech. Sol. & 

Servs., Inc. v. Republic of Korea’s Def. Acquisition Program 

Admin., 884 F.3d 463, 479 (4th Cir. 2018). That power may be 

exercised with respect to a foreign sovereign, and there is 

precedent for issuing an anti-suit injunction against a foreign 

sovereign. See BAE, 884 F.3d at 479 (noting that the district 

court “lifted a preliminary injunction it had previously 

imposed” against South Korea). “There are no precise rules 

governing the appropriateness of antisuit injunctions.” Laker 

Airways, 731 F.2d at 927. Rather, we must “carefully 

examine[]” the “equitable circumstances surrounding each 

request for an injunction” and determine whether the injunction 

is necessary “to prevent an irreparable miscarriage of justice.” 

Id. We have explained that “[i]njunctions are most often 

necessary to protect the jurisdiction of the enjoining court, or 

to prevent the litigant’s evasion of the important public policies 

of the forum.” Id. An anti-suit injunction is extraordinary 

relief that should be granted only under compelling 

circumstances. Id.; BAE, 884 F.3d at 480. 

We review the district court’s issuance of the anti-suit 

injunctions for abuse of discretion. See Laker Airways, 731 

F.2d at 916, 921. “The abuse of discretion standard means that 

the district court has a range of choice, and that its decision will 

not be disturbed as long as it stays within that range and is not 

influenced by any mistake of law.” Morrissey, 17 F.4th at 1156 

(cleaned up). In other words, we ask whether the district 

court’s decision was “at least within the zone of 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 48 of 63
8 

reasonableness, even if we might disagree with the decision[.]” 

Morley v. CIA, 894 F.3d 389, 391 (D.C. Cir. 2018). If we 

merely disagree, “[w]e may not substitute our judgment for that 

of the trial court,” especially when our review involves a multifactor balancing of interests. Morrissey, 17 F.4th at 1156, 

1159–60. Indeed, “it will be the rare case when we can reverse 

a district court’s balancing of [] factors.” Morley, 894 F.3d 

at 391. Our review must be guided by “appellate restraint, a 

principle faithful to the reality that appellate tribunals cannot 

hope to have the entire range of considerations as readily at 

hand as the court charged with the case in the first instance.” 

Founding Church of Scientology, Inc. v. Webster, 802 F.2d 

1448, 1457 (D.C. Cir. 1986); see id. (“The abuse-of-discretion 

standard calls on the appellate department, in a spirit of 

humility occasioned by not having participated in what has 

gone before, not just to scrutinize the conclusion but to 

examine with care and respect the process that led up to it.”).

III. 

In my view, the district court did not abuse its discretion 

in granting the Investors’ requests for anti-suit injunctions 

against Spain under the “equitable circumstances” presented. 

Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 927. The district court’s decisions 

(1) properly applied our precedent in Laker Airways, a case in 

which we upheld an anti-suit injunction in a similar posture; 

(2) considered the United States’ interests in protecting the 

jurisdiction of its courts and upholding the ICSID framework; 

(3) assessed Spain’s actions and prerogatives in a detailed 

discussion of “comity” concerns; and (4) gave appropriate 

weight to the irreparable harm that would be done to the 

Investors if the requested injunctions were denied. 

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9 

A. 

In Laker Airways, we considered dueling requests for 

injunctions, much like the ones at issue here. There, some 

defendants in an antitrust case in the United States successfully 

halted the proceedings against them by securing an anti-suit 

injunction in the United Kingdom. In response, the plaintiff 

obtained an “anti-anti-suit injunction” from the district court to 

prevent the remaining defendants from joining the U.K. 

litigation to secure similar injunctions that would have impeded 

the U.S. antitrust case. See Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 918; 

Maj. Op. 30–32. We upheld the anti-anti-suit injunction, 

reasoning that “where the foreign proceeding is not following 

a parallel track but attempts to carve out exclusive jurisdiction 

over concurrent actions, an injunction may be necessary to 

avoid the possibility of losing validly invoked jurisdiction” and 

to protect “the court’s ability to render a just and final 

judgment.” Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 930. In reaching that 

conclusion, we considered the defendants’ “strenuous[]” 

argument “that the district court’s injunction violates the 

crucial principles of comity that regulate and moderate the 

social and economic intercourse between independent 

nations.” Id. at 937. But we held that “the obligation of comity 

expires when the strong public policies of the forum are vitiated 

by the foreign act.” Id. 

We considered three factors important in upholding the 

district court’s anti-suit injunction: (1) the foreign lawsuit was 

brought with “the sole purpose . . . [of] terminat[ing] the 

American action,” Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 930 (emphasis 

in original); (2) defendants sought to “evade culpability under 

statutes of admitted [] importance to the United States which 

[were] specifically applicable . . . and upon which [the 

plaintiff] may have legitimately relied,” id. at 932; and (3) any 

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10 

comity concerns were a product of defendants’ own efforts “to 

generate interference with the American courts,” id. at 939–40. 

Here, the district court appropriately weighed the factors 

that we identified in Laker Airways. First, it considered the 

type of foreign suit to be enjoined: Spain’s requested relief in 

the Dutch and Luxembourgish courts was specifically targeted 

to interfere with the enforcement of the arbitral awards by the 

district court. The district court recognized that Spain filed its 

foreign lawsuits with the sole intention of depriving a U.S. 

court of jurisdiction to provide justice to parties that were 

properly before it. See NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 215–16. 

The nature of the competing foreign action weighed strongly in 

favor of issuing an anti-suit injunction under Laker Airways. 

Second, the district court considered other interests of the 

United States, specifically “encouraging arbitration and the 

enforcement of international arbitration law as an efficient 

means of settling disputes.” NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 221 

(internal quotations omitted). Although Laker Airways gave 

weight to the district court’s obligation to enforce U.S. antitrust 

laws — and such purely domestic laws are not at issue here — 

there is a strong analogous U.S. interest in enforcing the ICSID 

Convention, an international arbitration treaty that the United 

States ratified, and that Congress enacted into federal law. See 

Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 932 (upholding the anti-suit 

injunction that “properly prevented appellants from attempting 

to escape application of [governing] laws”). We have a 

statutory obligation to enforce ICSID awards with “the same 

full faith and credit as if the award were a final judgment of a 

court of general jurisdiction of one of the several States.” 

22 U.S.C. § 1650a(a). Moreover, the United States benefits 

from its membership in ICSID because American companies 

also enforce arbitral awards issued pursuant to the ICSID 

Convention. In fact, there have been at least 150 ICSID 

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11 

arbitrations brought by American investors. See Int’l Scholars 

Amicus Br. 19 n.14. 

Third, the district court recognized the importance of 

comity: It understood that Spain’s status as a sovereign nation 

weighed in favor of restraint. See NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 

216–17 (recognizing that “[c]onsiderations of comity” are 

“deserving [of] substantial respect,” but rejecting the argument 

that “‘comity compels us to recognize a decision by a foreign 

government that this court shall not apply its own laws’” 

(quoting Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 939) (emphasis in 

original)). Here, Spain’s claim to comity is greatly diminished 

by its own disregard for the comity due to the U.S. district 

court, which properly exercised its jurisdiction to hear the 

Investors’ facially valid claims. See id. at 217. It was Spain 

that filed the first requests for anti-suit injunctions in the 

Netherlands and Luxembourg, in a bold attempt to interfere 

with the Investors’ cases before the district court. In short, 

Spain is in a weak position to demand comity when it declines 

to practice what it preaches. 

Fourth, the district court properly weighed the prospect of 

irreparable harm to the Investors. The district court 

emphasized that “[i]f Spain receives the relief it seeks in the 

[foreign] action[s], [the Investors] will be permanently 

enjoined from enforcing the Award[s], both in this court and 

around the world.” NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 220. The court 

found that this was “precisely the kind of irreparable harm 

identified by the district court, and affirmed by the D.C. 

Circuit, in Laker Airways[.]” Id. It was well within the district 

court’s discretion to consider the harm to the Investors caused 

by Spain’s actions, and to find that the balance of equities 

“strongly” favored the Investors. Id. 

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12 

B. 

Despite the district court’s careful application of Laker 

Airways, and the equities that strongly favor granting relief to 

the Investors, the majority opinion holds that the district court 

abused its discretion in issuing anti-suit injunctions that “run 

against a foreign sovereign,” rather than a private litigant. Maj. 

Op. 34. The majority opinion states that “comity concerns [are] 

near their peak,” id. at 38, and the “only domestic interest the 

district court identified here is a public interest in encouraging 

arbitration,” which does not involve the enforcement of 

American laws or affect the interests of American creditors or 

consumers, see id. Moreover, the majority opinion asserts that 

the district court “did not address the fact that the anti-suit 

injunctions run against a foreign sovereign,” and “failed to 

identify domestic interests strong enough to warrant the antisuit injunctions.” Id. at 34, 38. Thus, the majority opinion 

emphasizes the factors that it believes are most important, 

performs its own weighing of interests, and reaches a different 

conclusion from that of the district court. I disagree with the 

majority’s approach to reviewing the district court’s exercise 

of discretion. 

The majority opinion’s independent balancing of factors 

understandably gives great weight to respecting the 

sovereignty of other nations. Its analysis, however, overlooks 

the narrow scope of the anti-suit injunctions issued by the 

district court. The majority opinion states that the injunctions 

“impinge on the sovereignty of both the Spanish government 

to litigate and the Dutch and Luxembourgish courts to decide 

an issue that Spain and the European Union view as an 

important question of European Union law.” Maj. Op. 35 

(cleaned up). But the district court tailored its injunctions to 

allow Spain to obtain a ruling on that issue of EU law from the 

foreign courts: The district court enjoined Spain only from 

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13 

seeking relief from the foreign courts that would require the 

Investors to “suspend, hold in abeyance, or withdraw” their 

actions before the district court — i.e., Spain could still litigate 

its claims in the Netherlands and Luxembourg to seek 

declaratory relief. NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 217, 222 

(preserving Spain’s ability to seek a declaration from Dutch 

and Luxembourgish courts “vindicating its interpretation of EU 

law”). In effect, the district court’s injunctions impinged only 

on Spain’s efforts to block the district court from hearing the 

Investors’ claims. As a result, the injunctions at issue here are 

far less intrusive than the ones described in other cases cited by 

the majority opinion. See Republic of Philippines v. 

Westinghouse Elec. Co., 43 F.3d 65, 73 (3d Cir. 1994) 

(vacating injunction that “purport[ed] to supervise and control 

the law enforcement activities of a foreign sovereign nation 

against its own citizens on its own soil”); BAE, 884 F.3d at 480 

(upholding denial of permanent injunction against South Korea 

in part because “comity concerns are far greater where an 

injunction would bar a foreign sovereign . . . from litigating a 

dispute in its own courts”). Indeed, it is questionable whether 

Spain’s interference with a lawsuit in the United States can 

even be considered a “sovereign” prerogative. 

The majority faults the district court for not paying enough 

attention to the two factors that the majority finds most 

compelling. But the district court properly considered both 

Spain’s status as a foreign sovereign and the interests of the 

United States, which are not limited to purely “domestic” 

concerns. First, the district court recognized that only 

“sufficiently unusual circumstances” would warrant “a 

preliminary, anti-suit injunction against a foreign sovereign,” 

NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 214 (emphasis added): The district 

court plainly was aware that Spain is a sovereign nation and 

that Spain’s sovereignty raised serious comity concerns. 

Second, the district court understood that the facts before it 

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14 

implicated both domestic and international interests of the 

United States — it expressly noted the importance of 

international arbitration, as well as the fact that Congress has 

passed a statute codifying key terms of the ICSID Convention, 

which assures prompt confirmation of arbitral awards. See id. 

at 217, 221 (recognizing the “public interest in encouraging 

arbitration and the enforcement of international arbitration law 

as an efficient means of settling disputes,” as well as “an 

expectation on the part of Congress that actions to enforce 

ICSID awards [will] not be protracted, much less permanently 

halted by collateral attacks in foreign courts” (cleaned up)). In 

sum, the district court did not “fail[] to consider” either of the 

factors singled out by the majority opinion — the majority 

simply disagrees with the weight that the district court assigned 

to them. Maj. Op. 33 (district court abuses its discretion when 

it “fails to consider a relevant factor” (emphasis added) 

(cleaned up)). Nor did the district court make a “clear error of 

judgment” when it performed the requisite balancing — the 

evident disagreement among members of this panel 

demonstrates that if there was error, it was not “clear.” Id. 

(district court abuses its discretion when it “commits a clear

error of judgment” (emphasis added) (cleaned up)). 

The majority opinion relies most heavily on “international 

comity” and is influenced by amicus briefs filed in this court 

by the United States and the Netherlands. See Maj. Op. 30, 35–

37.2 But the positions expressed by those amici were not before 

2

 The majority opinion notes that (1) the Netherlands and the 

United States “stress[]” the theme of international comity, Maj. 

Op. 30 (citing amicus briefs of the Netherlands and the United 

States); (2) the United States “warns that the injunctions here ‘have 

the potential to cause significant harm to the United States,’” id. at 35 

(quoting amicus brief of the United States) (cleaned up); (3) the 

views of the United States “are important, to be sure,” id. at 37; (4) 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 55 of 63
15 

the district court when the anti-suit injunctions were litigated 

and therefore should not be considered here. When applying 

an abuse-of-discretion standard of review, it is a 

“commonsense notion” that we should “only examine those 

parts of the record that were properly before the decisionmaker 

at the time the question was considered.” See Sanderlin v. 

United States, 794 F.2d 727, 734 (D.C. Cir. 1986). Thus, if the 

views of the United States and the Netherlands are important 

to the analysis at hand, we should remand for the district court 

to consider them in the first instance. Indeed, the cited amicus 

briefs provide us with the official positions of the United States 

and the Netherlands, and the interests of those nations are 

directly relevant to the weighing of international comity. That 

those amici feel strongly about how this case should be 

resolved is a fact that might have swayed the district court, just 

as it has swayed the majority. On appeal, our task is to 

determine “whether, in light of the particular factual 

circumstances, the trial court erred in applying or weighing the 

factors limiting its discretion.” Edwards & Elliott, Federal 

Standards of Review: Review of District Court Decisions and 

Agency Actions 72 (3d ed., 2023 Update) (emphasis added). 

Because the positions of the United States and the Netherlands 

were never put before the district court and thus could play no 

role in that court’s exercise of discretion, I believe that the 

the United States “tells us th[e] interests [in upholding the ICSID 

Convention] ‘are far outweighed by the interests in allowing the 

foreign litigation to proceed,’” id. at 39 (quoting amicus brief of the 

United States); (5) the Netherlands has not only declined to refer 

Spain to the International Court of Justice, but it “urges us to vacate 

the injunctions,” id. at 39–40 (citing amicus brief of the 

Netherlands); and (6) it “bears emphasis” that the Netherlands and 

Luxembourg likely “agree with Spain” in the underlying legal 

dispute, id. at 40. 

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16 

majority opinion errs in relying on those amicus briefs — the 

information they provide simply is not in the record on review. 

The majority opinion insists that the views of the United 

States “were before the district court” because Spain, in its 

briefing below, quoted an amicus brief filed in 2018 by the 

United States in an unrelated and factually distinguishable 

case. Maj. Op. 36–37 (emphasis in original) (relying on 

Spain’s citation and quotation of Brief for the United States as 

Amicus Curiae, BAE, 884 F.3d 463 (No. 17-1070) 2018 WL 

551803, at *2).3 Of course, Spain had no authority to speak for 

the United States and certainly could not do so by citing a brief 

from a different case that is on Westlaw. Only the United 

States itself could state its position regarding the unique 

circumstances presented here. Moreover, the majority states 

that “[i]f the interests of the United States were not clear to the 

district court, it could have invited the United States to file an 

amicus brief to clarify its position.” Maj. Op. 37. That 

statement expresses how the majority would have liked to see 

the district court handle this case but does not identify any 

3

 The dispute in BAE had nothing to do with arbitration, ICSID, 

or an anti-suit injunction instigated by a foreign sovereign to deprive 

a U.S. court of its statutorily conferred jurisdiction. Thus, the United 

States took no position on any of those interests in the amicus brief 

it filed in that case. BAE involved a contract dispute between a 

defense contractor and the Republic of Korea, where the defense 

contractor sought an anti-suit injunction barring Korea from pursuing 

a parallel contract suit in Korean courts. See BAE, 884 F.3d at 467. 

Indeed, the language that the majority opinion quotes from the 

United States’ amicus brief in BAE demonstrates how that case is 

inapposite: It characterizes as “extraordinary” “an antisuit injunction 

barring a foreign sovereign from invoking the jurisdiction of its own

courts.” Maj. Op. 37 (emphasis added) (quoting Brief for the United 

States as Amicus Curiae, BAE, 884 F.3d 463 (No. 17-1070) 2018 WL 

551803, at *2). Here, the anti-suit injunctions do not interfere with 

Spain’s invocation of the jurisdiction of its own (Spanish) courts. 

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17 

abuse of discretion: The district court was not required to 

invite the United States to file an amicus brief and therefore 

acted within its range of choices when it did not do so. The 

district court was allowed to consider the United States’ 

interests without that formal input. 

In my view, the majority opinion errs by focusing only on 

the factors that it deems most important while failing to address 

or glossing over several important considerations relied upon 

by the district court. The majority opinion overlooks important 

aspects of the district court’s ruling and cites no authority to 

support its incomplete review of the district court’s reasoning. 

First, the majority opinion seems to give insufficient 

weight to the United States’ obligation to uphold the ICSID 

Convention and its strong interests in doing so. See supra

at 10–11. Importantly, Spain’s strategy of interfering with the 

Investors’ ability to confirm their awards undermines the whole 

process envisioned by the ICSID Convention and the ECT. 

Both of those treaties facilitate foreign investments by 

guaranteeing investors a neutral arbiter in disputes with 

sovereign nations. Spain turns the framework on its head by 

forcing the Investors to litigate in forums of the sovereign’s

choice. Moreover, if Spain succeeds in blocking enforcement 

actions under the ICSID Convention by obtaining anti-suit 

injunctions in foreign jurisdictions that are friendly to it, other 

signatory states can follow the same playbook, thereby 

threatening the viability of the entire ICSID framework. 

Today’s majority opinion makes the United States an 

inhospitable forum for enforcing ICSID awards: It permits a 

foreign sovereign with assets in the United States who does not 

wish to honor an ICSID award to stymie any U.S. enforcement 

proceeding by filing for an anti-suit injunction in another 

nation. In this case, Spain chose to litigate in the Investors’ 

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18 

home countries, but nothing stops a foreign sovereign from 

requesting an anti-suit injunction from one of its own national 

courts — exactly the type of situation that the ECT and the 

ICSID Convention guard against. The majority opinion 

appears to greenlight such tactics. See Maj. Op. 38 (stating that 

the United States is not required to “remove obstacles in other 

countries that might make it harder for foreign investors to find 

their way to our courts”). The majority’s suggestion that the 

Investors could instead rely on the Netherlands and 

Luxembourg to refer “Spain’s treatment of their nationals” to 

the International Court of Justice, see id. at 39, misses the 

point: The Investors should not have to seek such a 

cumbersome remedy that affords them no immediate monetary 

compensation when the ICSID Convention and U.S. law give 

them a streamlined way to enforce their multi-million-euro 

arbitral awards in the United States. 

Next, the majority opinion overlooks Spain’s own lack of 

comity: As the district court pointed out, it is Spain that 

precipitated a clash of international interests by “seeking to 

frustrate the operation of U.S. law.” NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d 

at 217; supra at 11. Indeed, a strong case can be made that 

Spain has acted in bad faith and that the district court made a 

finding to that effect. Spain attempts to bully the Investors into 

withdrawing their legitimate lawsuits in the United States by 

requesting fines against them of EUR 30,000 or 100,000 per 

day; and it seeks foreign injunctions that plainly are intended 

to disrupt and hamper the cases before the district court. See 

Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 46 (1991) (“[A] party 

shows bad faith by delaying or disrupting the litigation or by 

hampering enforcement of a court order.” (cleaned up)). 

Although the district court did not use the words “bad faith,” it 

criticized Spain’s conduct and emphasized Spain’s attempt to 

“virtually eliminate[] the court’s effective jurisdiction” without 

“any prior notice.” See NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 216 

USCA Case #23-7038 Document #2070416 Filed: 08/16/2024 Page 59 of 63
19 

(quoting Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 930–31); see also id. at 

217, 221 (noting Spain’s “hypocrisy” and that Spain’s 

representations “verge on disingenuous”). Thus, the facts in 

the record speak for themselves and the district court both 

referred to and relied on Spain’s arguably bad-faith actions. 

See LaPrade v. Kidder Peabody & Co., 146 F.3d 899, 906 

(D.C. Cir. 1998) (It is “an empty formalism to find an abuse of 

discretion simply because the district court failed to invoke the 

magic words ‘bad faith.’”). Spain’s lack of comity and 

arguable bad faith support the anti-suit injunctions issued by 

the district court but are not addressed by the majority opinion. 

Furthermore, the majority opinion does not mention the 

district court’s finding that the anti-suit injunctions were 

necessary to prevent irreparable harm to the Investors. See 

supra at 11. The lawsuits that Spain brought in the Netherlands 

and Luxembourg seek to block the Investors from enforcing 

their arbitral awards in any forum in the world. And to be clear, 

NextEra and 9REN are the injured parties here. They invested 

in Spain’s energy sector after Spain promised to provide energy 

subsidies and that the Investors would be guaranteed a neutral 

arbitral forum if any disputes with Spain arose. When Spain 

breached its commitments, the Investors dutifully followed the 

procedures prescribed by the ECT and the ICSID Convention. 

Spain has fought them every step of the way. Thus, the 

Investors have expended substantial time and resources to 

participate in lengthy arbitration proceedings and to defend 

their sizeable arbitral awards in ICSID’s internal appeal 

process. They now seek only to confirm and enforce the 

awards in U.S. courts, as they are entitled to do under the ICSID 

Convention and U.S. law. Allowing Spain to extinguish the 

Investors’ rights and claims by obtaining foreign injunctions 

that forbid the Investors from ever confirming their awards is 

manifestly unfair. But the majority appears to conclude that 

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20 

the district court’s finding of irreparable harm to the Investors 

is irrelevant.4

I also believe that the majority opinion goes astray by 

focusing on the parties’ “underlying disputes” and on matters 

related to the interpretation or implementation of European 

law. See, e.g., Maj. Op. 38–39. Although the “underlying 

disputes” between Spain and the Investors do involve EU law, 

those disputes already have been resolved by ICSID arbitral 

panels. As a result, all that remains in the cases before us is the 

straightforward confirmation of the ICSID arbitral awards. In 

such cases, the district court’s scope of review is “below even 

the ‘extremely limited’ review available under the [Federal 

Arbitration Act],” and the district court may not consider the 

merits of the parties’ positions before the arbitral tribunal. See 

Valores, 87 F.4th at 520; see id. at 515 (“Contracting states’ 

courts are [] not permitted to examine an ICSID award’s merits, 

4

 In each of the two cases before us, the district court issued an 

injunction that relied on both the Laker Airways discussion of antisuit injunctions and traditional preliminary-injunction factors. See 

NextEra, 656 F. Supp. 3d at 214–21. In other words, the district court 

applied two sets of factors in issuing a single injunction. Thus, both 

parts of the district court’s analysis are relevant to our evaluation of 

how the district court exercised its discretion to issue each injunction. 

Indeed, the district court undoubtedly relied on its findings of 

irreparable harm when it issued the injunctions at issue. See id. at 

220. But the majority opinion appears to limit its review to the antisuit injunction factors discussed in Laker Airways, leaving its 

analysis incomplete. The majority opinion apparently takes this 

approach because the majority believes that it need not decide in this 

case whether a district court is required to consider the “four 

traditional injunction factors” in this context. Maj. Op. 33 n.1. Yet, 

even if we need not address whether the preliminary-injunction 

factors must be analyzed under the circumstances presented, we still 

are obligated to review what the district court actually did in this 

case. 

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21 

its compliance with international law, or the ICSID tribunal’s 

jurisdiction to render the award.” (cleaned up)). “Under the 

[ICSID] Convention’s terms, [the district court] may do no 

more than examine the judgment’s authenticity and enforce the 

obligations imposed by the award.” Id. Thus, we need not 

dwell on the “complex international puzzle” described by the 

majority opinion. See Maj. Op. 40. Rather, we should keep 

our eye on the ball and simply uphold the treaty obligation and 

the U.S. statute that require the district court to enforce any 

ICSID arbitration award as if the award “were a final judgment 

of a court in [the United States].” See ICSID Convention, 

art. 54; 22 U.S.C. § 1650a(a) (ICSID awards are entitled to “the 

same full faith and credit as if the award were a final judgment 

of a court of general jurisdiction of one of the several States.”). 

Unlike the majority, I am unable to reconcile our 

obligation to give full faith and credit to ICSID awards and to 

enforce them like final judgments with a ruling that allows 

Spain to block access to U.S. courts in a gambit to prevent the 

confirmation and enforcement of those very same awards. See

Maj. Op. 38 (“[T]he United States must open the doors of its 

courthouses to foreign investors seeking to enforce such 

awards. But neither the treaty nor the statute requires the 

United States to remove obstacles in other countries that might 

make it harder for foreign investors to find their way to our 

courts.”). Our affirmance of the district court’s jurisdictional 

rulings is a hollow victory for the Investors if they nevertheless 

will be enjoined by foreign courts from ever confirming their 

hard-won awards. 

For the foregoing reasons, I cannot agree with the 

majority’s approach or analysis in vacating the anti-suit 

injunctions. But whether my arguments are persuasive or not, 

the conflicting views expressed by members of this panel 

demonstrate that there is no objectively correct answer to the 

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22 

question of whether those injunctions should have been 

granted. Because there is more than one reasonable way to 

resolve these cases, the abuse-of-discretion standard requires 

us to affirm the choices made by the district court. See 

Morrissey, 17 F.4th at 1156 (“The abuse of discretion standard 

means that the district court has a range of choice, and that its 

decision will not be disturbed as long as it stays within that 

range and is not influenced by any mistake of law.” (cleaned 

up)); Morley, 894 F.3d at 391 (“[I]t will be the rare case when 

we can reverse a district court’s balancing of [] factors.”). 

* * * 

Even though the district court did not take the path 

preferred by the majority, it acted well within its discretion 

when it evaluated the equities in the way that it did. The 

majority opinion does not identify any relevant factor that the 

district court failed to consider or any mistake of law that it 

made. Instead, the majority disagrees with the district court’s 

weighing of interests and substitutes its own judgments for 

those of the district court. Because the majority opinion 

misapplies the required standard of review, I respectfully 

dissent as to Part II.B of the court’s opinion. 

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