US supreme court ends lawsuit alleging Cisco helped China pursue Falun Gong

Falun Gong protesters outside UN headquarters during the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York City on 19 September 2023. Photograph: Zak Bennett/AFP via Getty Images View image in fullscreen Falun Gong protesters outside UN headquarters during the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York City on 19 September 2023. Photograph: Zak Bennett/AFP via Getty Images US supreme court ends lawsuit alleging Cisco helped China pursue Falun Gong Suit ⁠alleged California-based company developed technology that allowed China to surveil members of movement ⁠The US supreme court further limited the reach of a federal law used to hold corporations liable for human rights abuses committed abroad, as it issued a ruling on Tuesday ending a lawsuit by ⁠members of the Falun Gong ⁠movement accusing Cisco Systems ​of facilitating religious persecution in China. The justices reversed a lower court’s decision that had breathed new life into the 2011 lawsuit, which was brought under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789. The suit ⁠had alleged that Cisco knowingly developed technology that allowed China’s government to surveil and persecute Falun Gong members. The Alien Tort Statute had been dormant for nearly two centuries before lawyers began using it in the 1980s to bring international ⁠human rights cases in US courts. The Cisco case posed the question of whether the law creates liability for corporations that “aid and abet” human ​rights abuses, a form of what is called accomplice liability. The lawsuit ‌accused San Jose, California-based Cisco of knowingly ‌designing and implementing the “Golden Shield,” an internet surveillance system used by the Chinese Communist party to target dissidents. The plaintiffs said China used ‌the system to track and then torture Falun Gong members. Cisco called the allegations unfounded and offensive. Donald Trump’s administration sided with Cisco in the case. The Human Rights Law Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Washington, sued Cisco on behalf of a group of Falun Gong members. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2014, saying the alleged conduct was not sufficiently connected to the United States for the case to proceed. The lawsuit stalled for many years, in part because of a series of supreme court decisions since 2013 limiting the Alien Tort Statute’s ‌reach, making it more difficult to hold US corporations legally liable for human rights abuses. Falun Gong, founded in China in 1992, was banned by China’s government in 1999 after thousands of members appeared at the central leadership compound ​in Beijing in silent protest. The group has called for people to renounce the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Falun Gong members founded a right-leaning US media outlet called The Epoch Times that has been heavily critical of the Chinese Communist party and supports Trump. The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals revived the case in 2023 and allowed it to move toward discovery, the evidence-gathering phase befo