Supreme Court kills suit claiming Cisco’s technology helped China persecute Falun Gong members
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted tech giant Cisco’s bid to shut down a lawsuit claiming that the company’s technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China.
The justices ruled that American courts are the wrong forum for the suits, rejecting arguments made by the plaintiffs that the suits should go forward under the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), first enacted in 1991.
The decision was the latest to rule against plaintiffs seeking to use U.S. courts as a venue to seek justice over the acts of foreign governments, especially those that took place abroad.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her majority opinion that the justices “close the door” that the court slightly opened in 2004 when it suggested that some human-rights claims might be viable under the ATS. “In truth, this class is a null set,” Barrett wrote, while acknowledging such cases “frequently involve heinous and inhumane acts.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the court “closes the courthouse doors not just to respondents, but to virtually every future litigant seeking redress for a violation of international law under the ATS.”
Falun Gong members had sought to overcome the court's skepticism by arguing that a substantial portion of Cisco’s activities involving China took place in the United States.
An Associated Press investigation last year showed that American tech companies, to a large degree, designed and built China’s surveillance state, encouraged by both Republican and Democratic administrations, even as activists warned such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious groups and target minorities. Last month, AP won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its stories.
In 2008, documents leaked to the press showed Cisco saw the “Golden Shield,” China’s internet censorship effort, as a sales opportunity. The company quoted a Chinese official calling the Falun Gong an “evil cult.” A Cisco presentation reviewed by the AP from the same year said its products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong material on the web.
Other presentations reviewed by the AP show that Cisco represented Falun Gong material as a “threat” and built out a national information system to track Falun Gong believers. In 2011, Falun Gong members sued Cisco, alleging the company tailored technology for Beijing that it knew would be used to track, detain and torture believers.
At arguments in April, Sotomayor said Cisco “knew that those people will be tortured.” A lawyer for the company said, “Cisco vigorously disputes those allegations.”
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