On June 23, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe, a case dealing with corporate liability for assisting the Chinese government in surveilling and persecuting members of a religious group. The Court ruled that federal courts may not hear human rights claims under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), and, separately, that aiding-and-abetting claims are not actionable under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). This represents a major shift in U.S. human rights litigation: In 2000, Human Rights in China assisted Zhou Fengsuo, now Executive Director of HRIC, to bring a case against Li Peng in New York under the aforementioned statutes for his role in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Last week’s decision will significantly restrict victims’ options to seek accountability from actors who assist foreign governments in carrying out human rights abuses.
In 2011, several Falun Gong practitioners filed a class action lawsuit against Cisco Systems, alleging that the company, through its headquarters in San Jose, California, designed, developed, and helped maintain certain components of China’s “Golden Shield,” a nationwide surveillance and domestic security system in China that significantly enhanced the Chinese government’s ability to identify, locate, arrest, and interrogate Falun Gong practitioners.
According to the complaint, the Golden Shield was intended to establish a nationwide internet surveillance network capable of collecting and analyzing information about Falun Gong practitioners, including their residential addresses, employment records, financial information, IP addresses, and connections with other practitioners. The plaintiffs alleged that, in order to secure contracts with the Chinese government, Cisco’s headquarters directed an extensive marketing campaign targeting Chinese authorities. The plaintiffs alleged that beginning in 1998, Cisco’s then-Chief Executive Officer, John Chambers, reportedly met on multiple occasions with Jiang Zemin, then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of China. They also alleged that Chambers discussed the objectives of the Golden Shield with Chinese officials. According to the complaint, Cisco ultimately obtained multiple government contracts and allegedly developed customized technological features specifically designed to assist Chinese public security authorities in identifying, apprehending, and interrogating Falun Gong practitioners. The plaintiffs contended that Cisco knowingly designed, developed, and maintained the system despite its awareness that the Chinese government would use it to persecute Falun Gong practitioners, thereby providing substantial assistance to the alleged human rights violations.
The action was filed in 2011 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In 2014, the district court dismissed the complaint, concluding that the plaintiffs had failed to sufficiently allege that their claims sufficiently touched and concerned the United States to satisfy the requirements of the ATS. The court also held that the complaint failed to adequately plead aiding-and-abetting liability under international law.
The plaintiffs appealed. In 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit partially reversed the district court’s decision and remanded the case for further proceedings. The Ninth Circuit held that the ATS permits federal courts to recognize claims based on aiding-and-abetting liability, and that the plaintiffs had adequately alleged that Cisco knowingly provided substantial assistance to the Chinese government’s violations of international law. The court further concluded that the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) permits claims against individual defendants for aiding and abetting torture.
On June 23, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I, reversing the Ninth Circuit’s judgment and remanding the case for further proceedings.
The Supreme Court held that federal courts lack authority to create new causes of action under the ATS. The Court explained that the ATS is primarily a jurisdictional statute and does not itself create substantive rights or causes of action. Although the Court’s 2004 decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain left limited room for federal courts to recognize a narrow class of well-defined, universally accepted, and judicially manageable causes of action under customary international law, the majority reversed course and eliminated this discretion left by Sosa. The Court emphasized that cases arising under the ATS often implicate sensitive issues of foreign affairs and international relations, making it difficult for courts to assess whether recognizing new causes of action would adversely affect the foreign policy interests of the United States. The Constitution assigns Congress—not the judiciary—the authority to define and punish offenses against the law of nations. Accordingly, the Court argued whether to establish additional causes of action is a legislative question reserved for Congress.
The Supreme Court further held that, although the TVPA authorizes victims of torture or extrajudicial killing to seek civil remedies against those directly responsible, the statute does not expressly provide for aiding-and-abetting liability. According to the Court, Congress’s silence on this issue indicates that it did not intend to create such a basis for liability. Consequently, the plaintiffs could not pursue aiding-and-abetting claims against Cisco or the individual defendants under either the ATS or the TVPA.
The Cisco litigation can be regarded as one of the most significant corporate accountability cases in the field of international human rights law. It was also the first case in which a major American technology company appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States for allegedly assisting the Chinese government in its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
The decision is expected to have far-reaching implications for international human rights litigation in the United States. By holding that federal courts lack authority to create new causes of action under the ATS through federal common law, the Supreme Court effectively closed the limited judicial pathway left open by Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain. The Court’s conclusion that the TVPA does not authorize aiding-and-abetting liability further restricts efforts to hold corporate actors accountable for assisting foreign governments in committing torture, enforced disappearances, and other grave human rights abuses.
From the perspective of international human rights protection, the ruling substantially narrows the scope of which victims of serious human rights abuses may seek relief in U.S. courts. The ATS had long served as one of the principal legal mechanisms for pursuing civil claims against corporations alleged to have participated in serious human rights violations committed abroad. For victims of torture, arbitrary detention, and religious persecution, U.S. courts have historically represented one of the few available forums in which meaningful judicial remedies could be sought. By significantly increasing the barriers to holding multinational corporations accountable through U.S. litigation, the decision has been viewed by many human rights advocates as a major setback for international human rights enforcement.
Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I has largely foreclosed the use of the ATS and the TVPA to pursue corporate liability for aiding and abetting serious human rights abuses committed abroad. However, it has not eliminated all means for international human rights litigation in the United States. The ruling limits only the judicial interpretation of the ATS and the TVPA; it does not preclude claims brought under other federal or state laws that provide independent causes of action and jurisdictional bases. So long as plaintiffs can assert an independent cause of action under U.S. law and satisfy the applicable requirements for personal jurisdiction, subject-matter jurisdiction, and other jurisdictional prerequisites—for example, where the relevant wrongful conduct, resulting injury, or other material facts occurred within the United States—they may still pursue civil remedies in U.S. courts. Therefore, whether similar cases can proceed in the future will increasingly depend on the existence of independent federal or state law causes of action, the strength of the case’s connection to the United States, and whether Congress chooses to enact legislation expressly authorizing such actions.
