The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared ready to grant Cisco’s request to end a lawsuit brought by Falun Gong over allegations that Cisco technology was used in China to persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The justices were weighing whether an appellate court was right to keep the case alive in U.S. courts, after Cisco argued that it cannot face liability under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th-century law, and the Torture Victim Protection Act, enacted in 1991.
The Supreme Court’s questioning focused on how broadly the court should interpret Cisco’s alleged exposure and whether lower courts have permitted too many similar cases to continue. Justice Neil Gorsuch asked whether the courthouse door was “not closely guarded.” He and other members of the conservative majority signaled skepticism about using U.S. litigation as a venue to seek remedies for conduct tied to foreign governments and actions carried out abroad.
In the background, Falun Gong and its supporters have argued that the jurisdictional barrier is lower in this dispute because a substantial portion of Cisco’s China-related activities took place in the United States. In recent years, the Supreme Court and presidential administrations of both parties have expressed skepticism toward lawsuits that seek to use U.S. courts to challenge acts of foreign governments that occurred overseas.
As described by the Associated Press, an earlier AP investigation found that American technology companies helped design and build China’s surveillance state, encouraged by Republican and Democratic administrations, even as activists warned that the tools were being used to quash dissent and persecute religious groups and minorities. The AP said leaked documents in 2008 showed Cisco viewed China’s “Golden Shield” internet censorship effort as a sales opportunity, and that Cisco quoted a Chinese official who described Falun Gong as an “evil cult.” The AP also reported that a Cisco presentation reviewed by AP from the same year said the company’s products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong material on the web.
Other Cisco presentations described by AP, the wire said, represented Falun Gong material as a “threat” and built components of a national information system to track Falun Gong adherents. The AP reported that 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.
During Tuesday’s argument, the justices signaled different approaches to how much of Falun Gong’s allegations should be allowed to proceed. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared more willing to let the lawsuit continue. Sotomayor said Cisco was a “willing partner with the Chinese government” and that, as she put it, “It knew that those people will be tortured,” according to the transcript reported by AP.
Cisco lawyer Kannon Shanmugam pushed back, telling the justices that the company disputed the allegation. “Cisco vigorously disputes those allegations,” Shanmugam told the court, according to AP’s account of the hearing.
A decision in the case is expected late June.