Human Rights Suit Over Cisco Work for China Heads to Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is confronting whether a US tech firm can face legal action for designing a digital surveillance system in Silicon Valley that allegedly facilitated a foreign power’s atrocities abroad.

The justices hear arguments on Tuesday over whether a 1789 law applies to Cisco Systems Inc.'s alleged role in developing and implementing the “Golden Shield” surveillance system that China used in a violent crackdown on adherents of the Falun Gong religious movement.

The dispute, to be decided by July, may further shape the pathway for efforts to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows courts to hear non-citizens’ lawsuits over certain violations of international law.

The justices over the past 20 years have sharply limited the scope of such lawsuits. But the court has so far left open a lane for the type of aiding-and-abetting allegations that 12 Chinese nationals and one US citizen have pursued against Cisco since 2011.

By simply reviewing Cisco’s appeal to bar those claims, the court will also for the first time grapple with the contours of the law in a case tied to the deployment of surveillance technology.

That feels especially relevant in an era where foreign governments are increasingly deploying technologies produced by US tech companies, said Sophia Cope, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which submitted a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit.

“If there’s no aiding and abetting claim, the ATS will be functionally dead vis-a-vis American technology companies,” Cope said. “That’s a problem, because there are no other mechanisms to hold them accountable unless Congress passes a new law.”

‘Major Loophole’

Cisco denies wrongdoing, saying it sold “off-the-shelf networking equipment” to Chinese officials that complied with US export controls.

Further, the company and its supporters across private industry claim allowing the suit would expand the centuries-old law far beyond its original intent, while improperly placing courts in middle of thorny questions affecting US foreign policy.

The conservative-led court’s recent decisions have generally favored big business. In 2021, the justices in an 8-1 decision rejected allegations that Nestle SA’s US unit and Cargill Inc. were complicit in the use of child slavery in Africa, finding the claims involved oversight that lacked a sufficient US connection to proceed.

That followed rulings that said the Alien Tort Statute doesn’t apply to conduct beyond US borders or foreign corporations.

“A favorable ruling for Cisco would not merely ‘confirm’ that ATS claims against US firms have little purchase—it would drive the point home,” said Cory Andrews, general counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation. “By rejecting judicially created aiding-and-abetting liability, the Court would close the last major loophole that plaintiffs’ lawyers have exploited to keep these cases alive post-Nestle.”

Cisco-China Partnership

The allegations against Cisco represent a “different kind of case” than Nestle, argued Paul Hoffman, a human rights lawyer representing the 13 plaintiffs.

It involves a US company that allegedly customized a surveillance system from California, knowing it would be used to help Chinese authorities in its crackdown of the Falun Gong religious movement, which it designated as illegal in 1999.

The plaintiffs say they were identified through the “Golden Shield” system, before being detained, tortured, and subjected to forced conversion.

Hoffman has argued nearly every case concerning the Alien Tort Statute before the Supreme Court, but he said this one poses unique issues for today’s digital age.

“It raises the question about how technology is going to be policed in the human rights arena,” he said.

It’s unclear how relevant that will be to arguments, which are expected to turn on analysis of the 33-word Alien Tort Statute, as well as a legal test the Supreme Court set up in 2004 for causes of action under the law.

That ruling said that viable claims must generally rest on whether they are violations of norms in international law, and that courts must consider the foreign policy implications of its decisions.

Cisco has argued that such a test only applies to a rare set of cases dealing with the violation of safe conducts, the infringement of the rights of ambassadors, and piracy. The firm will be represented at arguments by Kannon Shanmugam, who frequently argues before the court.

200 Suits

Former Cisco CEO John Chambers and another executive also face claims under the 1990s-era Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows civil suits against those who subject another to torture.

The justices will similarly consider dismissing the aiding-and-abetting allegations brought under that law, setting up another “good test” for how the court weighs laws that have invited human rights lawsuits, said Miriam Becker-Cohen, senior counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center.

The US Chamber of Commerce said in a friend-of-the-court brief that businesses have faced more than 200 lawsuits under the Alien Tort Statute in the past four decades, which it claims are typically based on abuses by “third parties” and damaged foreign investment. But Hoffman countered in his brief that the figure represents a small fraction of corporate litigation.

“This court’s decisions have further decreased the already-small number of ATS cases,” he wrote.

A decision in favor of Cisco will drive a steeper decline in such cases, and human rights advocates fear it will close a meaningful path for holding companies accountable for work tied to the misuse of technology overseas.

Hoffman appeared unfazed by a further narrowing of the law he’s brought lawsuits under for 45-plus years. While those cases will be even more difficult, he cited a landmark $38.3 million verdict in 2024 holding Chiquita liable in the deaths of Colombians by a paramilitary group, a case that was initially dismissed under the Alien Tort Statute. An appeal is now pending.

“The cases are going to be brought,” he said.

The case is Cisco v. Doe, U.S., 24-856, 4/28/26