WASHINGTON — In a landmark decision that severely limits the extraterritorial reach of the American judiciary, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that foreign plaintiffs cannot use historic federal human rights laws to sue American corporations for allegedly aiding and abetting abuses committed on foreign soil.
The 6–3 ruling in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe represents a massive victory for domestic technology leaders, defense contractors, and multinational enterprises. By shutting down these types of lawsuits, the high court has effectively insulated U.S. companies from civil tort liability in federal courts stemming from commercial partnerships, hardware sales, and technical support provided to authoritarian governments abroad.
The Death of “Aiding and Abetting” Under Old Statutes
Writing for the conservative majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett declared that federal courts lack the constitutional authority to create common-law causes of action under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) of 1789. She also concluded that the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA) does not extend to secondary “aiding and abetting” liability. Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
“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, referring to the high court’s 2004 benchmark in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain. “We also hold that the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, which contains an express cause of action, does not provide for aiding-and-abetting liability.”
Silicon Valley and China’s Digital Panopticon
The high-stakes litigation was sparked by lawsuits brought by anonymous practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been banned and heavily suppressed by the Chinese government since the late 1990s. The plaintiffs claimed they were subjected to systemic digital surveillance, arbitrary detention, forced labor, and severe physical torture by Chinese state security forces. They argued that these human rights abuses were actively facilitated and optimized by San Jose-based networking giant Cisco Systems and its executive team.
The complaint alleged that Cisco engineers deliberately customized routing hardware and developed specialized software modules for Beijing’s nationwide digital surveillance network, known as the “Golden Shield” project. The plaintiffs argued that Cisco tailored these tools to catalog, trace, and help apprehend Falun Gong adherents, fully aware that the resulting data would be used to conduct state-sponsored persecution and abuse.
Initially, a California federal district court dismissed the complaint, citing a lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision. The appellate court ruled that both the ATS and the TVPA permitted secondary aiding-and-abetting claims against U.S. corporations that knowingly assist in gross violations of customary international law. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday directly repudiates that appellate interpretation, effectively ending the plaintiffs’ search for accountability in U.S. courts.
Separation of Powers and Foreign Policy
Barrett’s majority opinion anchored the ruling in the constitutional separation of powers, arguing that only the legislative branch has the authority to create private rights of action for money damages. Permitting unelected judges to fashion civil torts based on evolving international standards, the majority reasoned, would allow the judiciary to encroach dangerously on foreign relations—a constitutional territory reserved exclusively for the president and Congress.
Because the ATS is merely a jurisdictional mechanism rather than an independent source of substantive law, and because the TVPA’s statutory language does not explicitly mention secondary liability, the court ruled the lawsuit could not proceed.
The majority’s decision aligned closely with arguments raised by the Department of Justice. In amicus briefs and oral arguments supporting Cisco, the Solicitor General’s office had warned that dragging domestic companies into federal court over foreign commercial transactions would undermine executive branch foreign policy, invite reciprocal lawsuits against American entities in overseas courts, and place American technology firms at a disadvantage in global markets.
Corporate defense lawyers and business coalitions welcomed the decision, calling it an essential check on decades of expansive litigation that threatened multinational firms with massive class-action liability for the actions of sovereign foreign nations.
Sharp Dissents from the Court’s Liberal Wing
The court’s three liberal justices strongly dissented, warning that the decision effectively immunizes American corporations that profit from atrocities abroad.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing the principal dissent and joined by Justice Elena Kagan, argued that the TVPA’s authorization of lawsuits against any individual who “subjects an individual to torture” naturally encompasses intentional facilitation under settled common-law tort definitions.
“Because the plain text of this statute includes individuals who aid and abet the victim’s torture, I would affirm the Ninth Circuit’s judgment,” Sotomayor wrote, contending that the majority had constructed an unwarranted corporate liability shield nowhere found in the text passed by Congress. Sotomayor criticized the majority for essentially creating a “magic-words test” that requires Congress to explicitly incant “aid and abet” to impose civil liability.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in part by Kagan, authored a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. She argued that Congress enacted the TVPA to provide a definitive federal forum for victims of state atrocities, with a remedial reach that naturally encompassed secondary actors who provide material operational support.
A Final Line in the Sand
The decision represents the culmination of a two-decade-long pullback by the Supreme Court from transnational human rights litigation, which began with Sosa and was reinforced through Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe. By rejecting secondary liability under both foundational statutes, the court has drawn an unambiguous bright line: without clear, affirmative authorization from Congress, foreign victims of state-sanctioned abuses cannot seek civil restitution against American corporations in federal court.
