The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a long-running lawsuit against Cisco Systems, Inc., ruling that American corporations cannot be held liable in domestic courts for aiding and abetting human rights abuses committed by foreign governments.

Background of the Case

The case stems from a 2011 lawsuit filed by practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999. The plaintiffs alleged that Cisco executives aggressively campaigned for and designed a customized, nationwide internet surveillance system known as the “Golden Shield.”

According to the complaint, Cisco engineers built facial recognition and data-tracking tools specifically tailored to help Chinese authorities identify, apprehend, and torture Falun Gong members. Cisco denied wrongdoing, and the legal battle worked its way through federal courts for over a decade.

Supreme Court Decision

Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered the majority opinion for the 6–3 court, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. The decision targeted the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a 1789 law that allows foreign citizens to bring civil suits in U.S. courts for torts committed in violation of international law.

The court rolled back its own 2004 precedent from Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, which had left a narrow opening for judges to recognize new international law claims. “Today, we close the door that Sosa cracked and hold that courts may not create new causes of action for violations of international norms,” Barrett wrote.

The majority emphasized that allowing judges to create new avenues for liability creates massive risks for American foreign policy and infringes on powers reserved for Congress. Barrett added that the judicial branch’s authority to establish new lawsuits under the ATS, “always described as slight, is more accurately described as nonexistent.”

Dissenting Opinion

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a sharp dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor argued that the majority went too far by completely eliminating future human rights claims under the ATS, effectively protecting corporations that profit from atrocities.

Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.