{"id":242,"date":"2026-06-23T16:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=242"},"modified":"2026-06-23T16:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:47:12","slug":"supreme-court-limits-ability-of-foreigners-to-bring-lawsuits-for-violations-of-international-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=242","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court limits ability of foreigners to bring lawsuits for violations of international law"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it far more difficult for foreigners to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts alleging serious violations of international law. In , the justices ruled that a 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute, on which plaintiffs have relied to bring such cases, only allows lawsuits based on the very small group of claims that Congress likely had in mind when it passed the law. The court also ruled that the Torture Victim Protection Act, a 1991 law that allows suits against individuals who subject others to torture while acting on behalf of a foreign government, does not allow lawsuits for aiding and abetting torture.<\/p>\n

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Barrett acknowledged \u201cthat ATS and TVPA cases frequently involve heinous and inhumane acts\u201d for which \u201c[t]he political branches or other international actors may well provide redress. But,\u201d she wrote, \u201cwe decline to distort the statutory text or the Constitution\u2019s allocation of powers to enlist U.S. courts in that project.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a dissent joined in part by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor contended that Tuesday\u2019s ruling \u201ccloses the courthouse doors not just to\u201d the plaintiffs in this case, but also \u201cto virtually every future litigant seeking redress for a violation of international law under the ATS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cisco Systems v. Doe<\/em> was one of a series of cases over the last 46 years seeking to rely on the ATS. The first such case was filed in 1980 in New York, by a Paraguayan doctor, Joel Filartiga, and his daughter, Dolly. They contended that a former Paraguayan police official now living in New York, Americo Pena-Irala, had kidnapped their family member and tortured him to death in retaliation for Joel\u2019s political activities and opposition to the Paraguayan government. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit allowed the family\u2019s lawsuit to go forward, reasoning that torture violates the law of nations.<\/p>\n

Since then, other plaintiffs have also sought to rely on the ATS to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts seeking compensation for human-rights abuses that occurred overseas. These plaintiffs sought to sue both foreign government officials for the violations themselves and corporations for their role in aiding and abetting those alleged violations.<\/p>\n

When the issue has come to the Supreme Court in the past, plaintiffs have not found a receptive audience. Instead, the court has repeatedly limited the scope of the ATS. In\u00a02004, in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain<\/em>, the court ruled that the ATS itself only gives courts the power to hear cases; it does not, standing alone, provide a cause of action. When the ATS was enacted, the court reasoned, Congress would have expected it to apply only to a \u201cnarrow set of violations of the law of nations\u201d \u2013 violations of safe-passage guarantees, violations of an ambassador\u2019s rights, and piracy \u2013 that could have had serious effects on the United States\u2019 relations with other countries. In the modern era, the court warned, claims under the ATS should go forward only if they both are widely accepted as a violation of international norms and can be defined as specifically as those three 18th-century wrongs. In 2013, in\u00a0Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.<\/em>, the court held that claims under the ATS must be based on conduct that occurs in the United States. And in\u00a0Jesner v. Arab Bank<\/em>, in 2018, the court ruled that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the ATS.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs in Cisco Systems<\/em> are practitioners of the Falun Gong religion, which began in China in the 1990s. In 1999, the Chinese government designated groups associated with the religion as illegal. The Chinese Communist Party and Chinese security officials sought to develop a massive online surveillance system, known as the \u201cGolden Shield,\u201d to find Falun Gong practitioners.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs allege that using the Golden Shield technology, the Chinese government identified them as Falun Gong practitioners. That, they say, led to their detention and human rights abuses in China that included torture, forced labor, beatings, and forced conversions. They contend that Cisco and two of its top officials aided and abetted those abuses by helping the Chinese government to create and maintain the Golden Shield. The Chinese plaintiffs relied on the ATS to bring their lawsuit in the U.S., while a U.S. plaintiff relied on the\u00a0Torture Victim Protection Act.<\/p>\n

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Cisco has denied the allegations. It that it complied fully with U.S. export control regulations and that it only sold the Chinese government \u201coff-the-shelf networking equipment\u201d \u201cthat it did not customize.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed the plaintiffs\u2019 aiding-and-abetting claims to go forward. Over a dissent by seven judges, the en banc 9th Circuit \u2013 which, because that court is so large, consists of only a subset of all of the judges on the court \u2013 declined to reconsider the case.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court reversed. The Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Sosa<\/em>, Barrett said, indicated both that the ATS is \u201cstrictly jurisdictional\u201d and that \u201ccourts have narrow authority to create causes of action under it\u201d \u2013 stances that \u201care in obvious tension with one another.\u201d Moreover, she added, \u201casserting such authority would intrude on both Congress\u2019s\u201d power to create rights to sue \u201cand the power of the political branches to direct the Nation\u2019s foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given these limitations, Barrett wrote, the Supreme Court has never actually created a right to sue under the ATS, and it now holds both \u201cthat courts may not create new causes of action for violations of international norms\u201d and that the TVPA \u201cdoes not provide for aiding-and-abetting liability.\u201d Although foreign plaintiffs can still bring claims for the original three violations of international law recognized in Sosa<\/em>, she emphasized, there are no others.<\/p>\n

In her 27-page dissent, Sotomayor contended that the majority\u2019s opinion \u201coverrules Sosa<\/em>, without even acknowledging that it is doing so. Today\u2019s decision,\u201d she wrote, therefore \u201cmarks yet another low point in this Court\u2019s esteem for its precedents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson wrote separately, in a brief opinion joined by Kagan, to note that she agreed with the majority that aiding-and-abetting claims cannot go forward under the TVPA, even if she did not agree with the reasoning on which the majority relied to reach that conclusion.<\/p>\n

Read more Announcement of opinions for Tuesday, June 23<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it far more difficult for foreigners to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts alleging serious violations of international law. In , the justices ruled that a 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute, on which plaintiffs have relied to bring such cases, only allows lawsuits based on the very small group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSupreme Court limits ability of foreigners to bring lawsuits for violations of international law - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=242\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court limits ability of foreigners to bring lawsuits for violations of international law - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it far more difficult for foreigners to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts alleging serious violations of international law. 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