A federal district court in Washington, D.C., ruled last week that the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank Group, has absolute immunity and thus cannot be sued in the United States...The district court concluded that it was required to find that the IFC is entitled to absolute immunity based on previous decisions from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs had argued that recent Supreme Court cases addressing immunity overturned the D.C. Circuit’s decisions. The district court did not consider that argument, but instead held that it should be heard and decided by the D.C. Circuit on appeal...From the start, the IFC recognized that the Tata Mundra project was a high-risk project that could have “significant” and potentially “irreversible” adverse impacts on local communities and their environment. Yet it failed to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to the communities and to ensure that the project abided by the required environmental and social conditions....