'' Bank Markazi v. Peterson '' , 578 U.S. ___ ( 2016 ) , was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case , identified by docket number , and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative ( Congress ) and judicial branches of government . The plaintiffs in the trial court , respondents in the Supreme Court , were several parties who had obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism , particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing , and sought execution against a bank account in New York held , through European intermediaries , on behalf of Bank Markazi , the state-owned Central Bank of Iran . The initial plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010 . Bank Markazi raised several defenses against the execution against the account , including that the account was not an asset '' of '' the bank , but rather an asset of its European intermediary , under both New York state property law and § 201 ( a ) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act . In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments , Congress included a section within a 2012 bill , codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772 , that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number , applied only to the assets in the identified case , and essentially abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account . Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government , because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law . The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and , on appeal , the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account , which held about $ 1.75 billion in cash
1983 Beirut barracks bombings
1983 Beirut barracks bombings
Bank Markazi v. Peterson