On June 23, 2026, the US Supreme Court decided Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe, No. 24-856, holding that courts may not create new rights of action to remedy violations of international norms, and also that there is necessarily no liability for aiding and abetting such violations.
The plaintiffs were practitioners of Falun Gong, a religious movement that began in China in the 1990s. They alleged that the Chinese government persecuted them for their beliefs, and that Cisco Systems, Inc., enabled their persecution by developing surveillance technology that helped the Chinese government identify and apprehend them. The plaintiffs sued Cisco and its executives for aiding and abetting violations of international law, relying on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). One plaintiff also sued two Cisco executives for aiding and abetting torture under the Tort Victim Prosecution Act of 1991 (TVPA). The Ninth Circuit determined that the plaintiffs could bring their aiding and abetting claims under the ATS and the TVPA.
The Supreme Court reversed. The Court began by acknowledging a "tension" in its prior decision under the ATS in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004). There, the Court stressed that "the ATS is a jurisdictional statute creating no new causes of action," but said at the same time "that the ATS allows for the possibility of new, judicially created causes of action to enforce norms of international law." Sosa articulated a two-step framework for when this "very modest authority to create causes of action under the ATS for violations of international norms" may be exercised: (1) plaintiffs must show that the international norm has a "definite content and acceptance among civilized nations"; and (2) plaintiffs must show "it would be prudent for the court to create the proposed cause of action when the political branches have not acted."
The Court rejected the plaintiffs' theory of aiding and abetting international law violations under the ATS, holding that 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." In so doing, the Court "close[d] the door that Sosa cracked to judicially created ATS liability." The Court reasoned that it was "difficult to think of a case in which a court 'might safely conclude' that a new ATS cause of action would not have detrimental foreign policy consequences." The Court also stressed that the "power to create causes of action belongs to Congress," which is in a better position than courts "to evaluate the policy tradeoffs of creating liability." It noted: "judicially created causes of action offend the separation of powers in almost every circumstance."
The Court also rejected the argument that the TVPA provides for aiding-and-abetting liability. It reasoned that when Congress seeks to impose such liability, it does so "expressly." Because the TVPA "nowhere mentions aiding-and-abetting liability," "that silence [was] enough to settle the issue."
Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court, which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh joined. Justice Jackson filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, which Justice Kagan joined. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, which Justices Kagan and Jackson joined in part.
