Supreme Court Closes Door on Corporate Liability for Human Rights Abuses, Leaving Tech Companies Unaccountable

Over the past twenty years, the Supreme Court has incrementally narrowed the scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a statute that permits citizens from other nations to bring civil lawsuits against individuals or organizations responsible for harms stemming from breaches of international law. In its decision in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I, the Court delivered what amounts to a terminal blow to the statute's utility, eliminating—barring legislative intervention—the possibility that plaintiffs could leverage this law to pursue technology corporations for facilitating and enabling human rights violations. The Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted multiple friend-of-the-court filings in this matter, most recently at the Supreme Court level.

The Supreme Court Rejected New Causes of Action Under the ATS

Congress enacted the ATS during its inaugural session in 1789, granting U.S. federal courts authority to adjudicate civil disputes initiated by foreign nationals against parties who violated "the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The question of which civil claims qualify as legitimate under "the law of nations" has remained contested throughout the statute's history.

In Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004), the Supreme Court identified three categories of historical international law claims that the original Congress probably contemplated: violations of safe passage, breaches of diplomatic immunity, and acts of piracy—collectively referred to as the Blackstone Three.

The Sosa decision further established that federal courts might recognize additional substantive claims under the ATS provided they correspond to international norms characterized as "specific, universal, and obligatory," noting that this "door is still ajar subject to vigilant doorkeeping, and thus open to a narrow class of international norms today."

By this reasoning, the Sosa court determined that the ATS could serve as a mechanism for pursuing claims grounded in both longstanding international law violations and carefully selected contemporary claims embodying modern human rights principles.

In its Cisco decision, the Supreme Court reversed the second holding from Sosa. The majority determined that the matter before it—involving a technology corporation facilitating torture and other human rights violations—fell outside the scope of the original three ATS categories and that courts lacked authority to establish novel mechanisms for enforcing international law. The Court stated:

[W]e close the door that Sosa cracked to judicially created ATS liability. We do not disturb Sosa's holding that the ATS is a jurisdictional statute; nor do we revisit its assumption that causes of action are available for torts corresponding to the Blackstone three. We conclude only that Sosa was overly optimistic in its prediction that there might be a narrow class of cases in which courts may create ATS actions without infringing on the prerogatives of the political branches. In truth, this class is a null set. What result for this case? Cisco argues that the Ninth Circuit erred in holding that aiding-and-abetting liability exists under the ATS for the torts alleged by the plaintiffs. Cisco is correct. 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. Plaintiffs' ATS claims against Cisco must be dismissed.

Supreme Court majority opinion in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I

Cisco Escapes Accountability for Facilitating Severe Human Rights Violations

The Supreme Court's termination of the action against Cisco represents a significant setback, particularly given that litigation commenced in 2011 and the Ninth Circuit in 2023 had permitted the case to advance based on a thorough and persuasive ruling. That court concluded, in part:

We conclude that Plaintiffs' allegations, accepted as true, are sufficient to state a plausible claim that Cisco provided essential technical assistance to the douzheng [violent struggle] of Falun Gong with awareness that the international law violations of torture, arbitrary detention, disappearance, and extrajudicial killing were substantially likely to take place.

Ninth Circuit opinion, 2023

The plaintiffs brought their action against Cisco based on the corporation's involvement in constructing and implementing the "Golden Shield," commonly known as "The Great Firewall of China"—an extensive surveillance infrastructure that Cisco initiated development of in the late 1990s and subsequently modified to facilitate the Chinese government's targeting of disfavored populations, particularly practitioners of the Falun Gong faith.

The thirteen plaintiffs, all Falun Gong practitioners, described experiences of arrest, confinement, and abuse, encompassing themselves and relatives, with at least one family member perishing from injuries sustained during detention. The allegations depicted extreme mistreatment: confinement in forced labor facilities, beatings with metal implements, exposure to electrical shocks, deprivation of sleep, and violent forced feeding.

Significantly, the plaintiffs also detailed how personal communications—emails, text exchanges, and other correspondence—that the Golden Shield had captured were subsequently displayed to them and weaponized during torture sessions and coerced ideological conversion attempts, accompanied by threats directed at family members and others in their communication networks.

With this ruling, Cisco has been absolved of responsibility for all of these allegations.

Congress Must Establish Legal Mechanisms to Hold American Tech Companies Accountable

In submissions to the Supreme Court, advocates contended that a comprehensive statutory framework is essential because existing voluntary and informal systems for corporate human rights accountability prove insufficient.

The plaintiffs initiated their case in 2011. In 2012, Cisco released its inaugural Global Human Rights Policy. Throughout the intervening period, the organization has furnished no compensation to the plaintiffs, notwithstanding language in its current human rights policy stating:

Where we have identified that we have caused or contributed to an adverse human rights impact, we are committed to providing access to and cooperating in remediation for affected individuals, workers, and communities through legitimate processes.

Cisco Global Human Rights Policy

Furthermore, the Associated Press undertook a comprehensive 2025 investigation—which subsequently received the Pulitzer Prize—documenting Cisco's and other American technology corporations' contributions to constructing China's surveillance apparatus over three decades. When contacted by AP journalists, these organizations dismissed any suggestion of human rights obligations and merely "said they adhere to relevant export controls, laws and regulations where they operate."

In essence, Cisco's stated commitment to human rights represents rhetoric without substance.

With the Supreme Court having effectively rendered the ATS inoperative, Congress bears the responsibility of taking action. Although alternative remedies may exist under state-level statutes, a comprehensive federal human rights statute is imperative—one that would enable any plaintiff to pursue American corporations—particularly those in the technology sector—for facilitating and enabling human rights violations, provided the defendant possessed knowledge or intent that such violations would transpire, regardless of whether victims experienced these violations domestically or internationally.

The consequences of this absence in American human rights law are substantial. As legal scholar Harold Koh reflected:

[T]he Justices should ask whether affording such immunity in Cisco would implicitly signal to U.S. companies that they could not be held liable for assisting the U.S. government in committing gross violations. Such violations could include constructing a mass surveillance system that may be used to surveil, persecute, retaliate against, and punish real and perceived opponents and constructing systems that autonomously commit war crimes.

Harold Koh

American corporations ought not receive immunity to develop surveillance infrastructure (or comparable technologically advanced systems) that not only undermines individual privacy or enables suppression of expression, but that can also precipitate tangible physical harm and loss of life.