“Rather than keep playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with the lower courts, the Supreme Court should decide, once and for all, that the ATS permits no liability for aiding and abetting.”
—Cory Andrews, WLF General Counsel & Vice President of Litigation

Click here for WLF’s brief.

(Washington, DC)—Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review, and ultimately overturn, an appeals court decision that would allow activists to impose liability on U.S. entities for aiding and abetting a third-party’s alleged human rights violations overseas.

 The plaintiffs, practitioners of Falun Gong, allege that they or their family members were victims of human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese government officials. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit could proceed under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which authorizes tort claims bottomed on a violation of “the law of nations.” Citing evidence that the defendants, including worldwide technology leader Cisco, lawfully sold networking hardware and software to Chinese law enforcement agencies as permitted by Commerce Department regulations, the Ninth Circuit held that the defendants must stand trial for aiding and abetting human rights abuses.

 In its brief urging review, WLF contends that the Ninth Circuit, by permitting such suits to proceed, has disregarded both the Constitution’s and the Supreme Court’s crucial limits on a federal court’s ability to imply a new cause of action under the ATS. As WLF’s brief shows, whether the ATS implicitly supplies a remedy for aiding and abetting is a decision best left to Congress, not the Judiciary.