The Supreme Court on June 23 ruled in favor of tech giant Cisco, shutting down a human rights lawsuit accusing the firm of facilitating abuses in China.
The suit, brought by Falun Gong practitioners in 2011, alleged that Cisco knowingly created and customized technology for the Chinese regime to surveil and persecute Falun Gong.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said the lawsuit cannot go forward—as the plaintiffs had argued—under the 237-year-old Alien Tort Statute and the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act.
The Alien Tort Statute has been a vehicle for decades for lawyers to file international human rights cases in U.S. courts. The Supreme Court, in recent years, has been narrowing the scope of the law, restricting its reach to cases with direct, substantial U.S. connections.
More than a dozen plaintiffs have argued that a significant portion of Cisco’s alleged actions took place on U.S. soil.
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Internal documents viewed by The Epoch Times show that Cisco had boasted about its products’ capabilities to identify Falun Gong materials online. Another used a phrase targeting Falun Gong that aligned with the Chinese regime’s propaganda against the belief.
Cisco has denied wrongdoing.
Barrett said in the decision that the Torture Victim Protection Act does not expressly mention the aiding-and-abetting liability.
“Courts cannot create new rights of action to remedy violations of international law, so there is necessarily no liability for aiding and abetting such violations,” she wrote.
A Door Shuts to Victims
All six conservative justices joined in the majority opinion, while the three liberal justices expressed dissenting views as to the Alien Tort Statute.
Sotomayor said that the court erred by “ignoring the plain meaning of the Torture Victim Protection Act” and “slamming the door completely shut to claims by U.S. citizens against those who aid and abet torture.”
The decision now effectively bars “almost any claimed violation of international law” under the Alien Tort Statute, including torture, slave labor, and even genocide, she wrote, describing the move as “yet another low point in this Court’s esteem for its precedents.”
Terri Marsh, executive director of the Human Rights Law Foundation, which filed suit against Cisco on behalf of the plaintiffs, said she was greatly disappointed by the majority’s ruling, quoting Sotomayor’s dissent that “proper respect for Congress should have led to a different outcome.”
“As Justice Sotomayor forcefully contended, a ‘straightforward application of this Court’s settled case law’ should have allowed the Plaintiffs’ case to proceed,” Marsh told The Epoch Times.
“It is important to note that the Court’s ruling has nothing to do with the sufficiency of plaintiffs’ factual allegations nor does it cast any doubt on the fact—recognized by Congress and the Executive Branch many times—of China’s campaign of abuses against Falun Gong believers.”
The court ruling also deeply disappointed Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who had chaired a 2006 congressional hearing highlighting Western corporate complicity in China.
The evidence of these firms supplying technology facilitating Beijing’s abuses is “extensive and well-documented,” he said in a statement.
He said the decision to limit the two federal statutes’ reach “creates a dangerous and disheartening precedent.”
The Foreign Policy Question
Barrett wrote that aiding-and-abetting actions could harm U.S. foreign interests.
Sotomayor disagreed in her dissent.
“The political branches have already consistently condemned China’s treatment of Falun Gong members,” Sotomayor wrote, noting that the State Department and Congress have consistently denounced the persecution of Falun Gong.
Any potential foreign policy consequences will be limited because the case focuses on a U.S. company and its conduct in the United States, rather than the Chinese regime, she said.
“That China has not done so here is additional evidence that this case is unlikely to aggravate U.S.–China relations,” Sotomayor said.
Her dissent was joined in part by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Plaintiff lawyer Paul Hoffman said he believes that “the Founding generation would have been shocked” at the court’s interpretation of the statute.
“Only 20 years ago, the same court held the opposite,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The victims of egregious human rights violations should be able to sue U.S. corporations who aid and abet those violations in U.S. courts.”
Hoffman urged Congress to act to make this possible.
Smith commended the plaintiffs for their courage in “taking such a formidable and powerful corporation to court.”
“We must continue to work to hold China accountable on the international stage for its heinous human rights abuses,” he said, adding that he is committed to “fighting for justice for all Falun Gong practitioners, who are harassed, tortured, abused, oppressed, and surveilled at the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party].”