The legal battle over Nazi-looted art reached a new milestone as the Republic of Austria, Vienna’s renowned Albertina Museum, and the Leopold Museum Foundation filed a joint legal response addressing amicus curiae briefs submitted by the United States Department of Justice and two prominent U.S. senators. In their latest court filing, the European defendants reiterated their core argument that the recently updated Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act violates foundational principles of the U.S. Constitution, specifically targeting Article III and the Tenth Amendment.
The ongoing lawsuit, Reif v. Republic of Austria, was brought by Timothy Reif, a descendant of Fritz Grünbaum, a celebrated Jewish cabaret performer and art collector who perished in a Nazi death camp in 1941. Reif is seeking the restitution of several valuable works by expressionist master Egon Schiele, which he maintains were systematically looted by the Nazi regime when they seized Grünbaum’s extensive collection during World War II.
The defendants, however, sharply dispute these claims. They contend that the specific artworks in question are part of a separate cache legally exported from Austria by Grünbaum’s sister-in-law during the 1930s and subsequently sold to a Swiss art dealer in the 1950s. This factual disagreement over the provenance and movement of the artworks forms the baseline of a dispute that has now escalated into a broader constitutional showdown between foreign cultural institutions and the United States federal government.
The latest court filing was submitted in direct response to amicus curiae briefs filed last month by the U.S. Department of Justice alongside Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas. Those government and legislative briefs provided additional legal precedent and arguments supporting the constitutional validity of the HEAR Act, pushing back against earlier motions filed by the Austrian defendants. The Friday filing addresses those legal precedents point-by-point.
While the defendants noted in their brief that they “respect the work of the Senators and the Government, and their attention to trying to remedy at least some of the horrors of the Holocaust,” they firmly maintained that in passing the amended version of the statute, “Congress exceeded its constitutional bounds.”
Representatives for Senators Blumenthal and Cornyn did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the latest developments in the case.
At the center of the dispute are the 2025 amendments to the HEAR Act, which were signed into law last year. Originally enacted in 2016 to establish a federal framework to facilitate the recovery of artwork stolen by the Nazi regime, the legislation was originally slated to sunset in 2026. The 2025 amendments extended the act indefinitely and introduced critical changes intended to address high-profile restitution cases that had previously faltered in U.S. courts on technical legal grounds, such as varying state-level statutes of limitations.
The defendants argue that the HEAR Act stops short of creating a comprehensive federal law for art restitution—which might resemble federal copyright law—and instead unconstitutionally delegates the substantive means to restitute Nazi-looted art directly to individual states. Under the statute, courts are directed to rely on applicable state laws while eliminating standard defenses based on procedural technicalities, effectively dictating how judicial bodies must rule on the cases before them.
According to the legal team representing Austria, the Albertina, and the Leopold Museum, this statutory mechanism runs afoul of two key provisions of the U.S. Constitution. First, they argue it violates the Tenth Amendment, which reserves powers not explicitly granted to the federal government to the states or the people. Second, they argue it breaches Article III, which establishes the separation-of-powers doctrine and vests federal courts with the independent authority to adjudicate cases and controversies without legislative interference.
“By forbidding the federal courts from any longer considering these equitable defenses, Congress is intruding on the constitutional right and obligation of Article III courts to ‘decide’ such cases and controversies for themselves,” the defendants’ response states.
Among the specific legal tools eliminated by the 2025 amendments is the defense of laches. Under traditional legal principles, the doctrine of laches allows a court to dismiss an otherwise valid claim if the claimant has unreasonably delayed bringing the lawsuit, resulting in unfair prejudice to the current owner because critical evidence or witnesses have been lost over time.
The defendants’ filing emphasizes that the elimination of this defense ties the hands of the judiciary. The changes bar courts from conducting “any factfinding as to questions of whether ‘inexcusable delay’ by a plaintiff or the plaintiff’s predecessors caused the loss of critical evidence, resulting in ‘unfair prejudice’ to the current owner of allegedly stolen art.”
The response further elaborates on the implications of removing this safeguard, arguing that “by outlawing the laches defense in particular, which prevents unprovable allegations of Nazi theft from becoming de facto conclusive presumptions of Nazi theft, the HEAR Act unquestionably does compel particular factfinding in favor of plaintiffs.”
William L. Charron, an attorney representing the Austrian defendants, explained in a phone interview that the primary purpose of Friday’s filing was to directly address the arguments for the HEAR Act’s constitutionality raised by the Justice Department and the two senators.
“The government and the Senators intervened and involved themselves in this case because they wanted to be heard as to their reasons why they believe the HEAR Act is constitutional, and so this was an opportunity for my clients to respond and explain why they respectfully disagree with those positions and respectfully believe the HEAR Act is unconstitutional,” Charron told ARTnews.
Despite the heavy focus on constitutional law in the recent filings, Charron noted that he believes Reif v. Republic of Austria can ultimately be resolved on alternative legal grounds without the court needing to address the constitutionality of the HEAR Act at all. However, he acknowledged that if the presiding judge determines that a ruling on the statute’s validity is unavoidable, the case carries significant enough weight to eventually find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I believe these are important and serious issues,” Charron said regarding the arguments raised in the filing. “We have given the Court a number of arguments and grounds to dismiss the case without having to rule upon these constitutional questions. But if the Court decides that it does need to address the constitutionality of the HEAR Act, I certainly hope that it seriously considers the arguments that have been raised in this filing.”
