Supreme Court Limits Corporate Liability in overseas human rights cases with Dismissal of Falun Gong Surveillance Lawsuit Against Cisco]

Supreme Court Limits Corporate Liability in overseas human rights cases with Dismissal of Falun Gong Surveillance Lawsuit Against Cisco]

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled to limit the use of a federal law that holds U.S. corporations liable for human rights abuses abroad, dismissing a lawsuit that accused Cisco Systems of aiding the Chinese government’s persecution of the Falun Gong movement.

The 6-3 ruling reversed a lower court’s decision that had allowed a lawsuit filed by Falun Gong members in 2011 under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789. The suit alleged that Cisco knowingly developed technology that enabled China’s government to surveil and persecute Falun Gong members.

(Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

The Alien Tort Statute had been effectively dormant for nearly 200 years before lawyers started to use it in the 1980s to bring international human rights cases. The Cisco suit questioned whether it can be used to hold corporations liable if they “aid and abet” human rights abuses through “accomplice liability.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the majority opinion which supported Cisco’s argument that the law doesn’t support holding companies liable for aiding and abetting human rights abuses.

“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,” Barrett wrote as the ruling dismissed the claims against Cisco.

The Supreme Court’s ruling split the justices along ideological lines, with the six conservative justices in the majority and the three liberals dissenting.

(Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The Falun Gong movement was founded in China in 1992 and was banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 after thousands of the group’s members appeared at the central leadership compound in Beijing to stage a silent protest. The group has called for its members to denounce the CCP and has been heavily critical of its leadership in China.

Plaintiffs accused Cisco of knowingly designing and implementing the “Golden Shield,” which is an internet surveillance system used by the CCP to target dissidents, and they say China used the system to track and torture Falun Gong members.

Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said they were disappointed with the ruling and called for Congress to take action and create a law “so that victims of serious human rights violations at the hands of U.S. corporations may hold those corporations accountable in U.S. courts under the Alien Tort Statute.”

(David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that was reversed by the Supreme Court had held the plaintiffs demonstrated plausible claims that Cisco provided technical assistance to the CCP and permitted it to proceed to discovery in advance of a trial. The Supreme Court’s decision dismissed the lawsuit.

Cisco called the allegations against them unfounded and offensive.

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