A majority of the Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical of the case against Falun Gong members who say an American technology company helped the Chinese government to persecute them.
The lawsuit alleges that Cisco Systems Inc. helped the Chinese government create an Internet surveillance program, known as Golden Shield, which enabled the government to monitor and harm members of a spiritual organization, which is banned in China.
The issue before the Supreme Court is whether American courts can adjudicate these disputes. During oral arguments Tuesday, several court officials expressed concern about allowing the case to proceed, suggesting that the executive branch and Congress, not the courts, were better equipped to handle allegations of human rights abuses in other countries.
“I am concerned about the level of separation of powers,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said, adding that he was concerned that allowing such cases might give Congress little incentive to act.
It was not clear whether the judges ultimately agreed on how to handle the issue, but many expressed concern that lower courts have allowed many similar cases aimed at imprisoning companies and individuals responsible for human rights abuses abroad.
The case before the court, Cisco Systems Inc. v. Doe, first posted in 2011. It reached the Supreme Court after a panel of federal judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed in July 2023 that the case could proceed, finding that Falun Gong members had met the legal bar to press their claims.
Cisco, who denies the allegations in the case, asked the jury to answer them. The Trump administration joined the lawsuit in support of Cisco.
Falun Gong is a religious movement that started in China about thirty years ago. Since then, it has gained a following around the world, supporting non-violence and the health benefits of its meditation practice.
The Chinese government banned the group after Falun Gong followers held a peaceful rally in April 1999 outside the Communist Party leadership headquarters in Beijing. The party’s effectiveness in organizing and organizing its followers angered Chinese leaders, and its workers alleged persecution, imprisonment and torture by the government.
Falun Gong members have sued Cisco Systems under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 federal law that allows foreign nationals to bring lawsuits in US federal courts for wrongs committed in violation of international law or US treaties.
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They contend that the company, based in San Jose, Calif., helped the Chinese government design and develop a surveillance and monitoring system that included a database containing the locations, contact information and other personal information about Falun Gong practitioners. The plaintiffs allege that Cisco does most of this work from its offices in the United States.
The Falun Gong practitioners who brought the lawsuit allege that Cisco technology is being used by the Chinese government to identify them and subject them to forced conversion and torture.
The court has considered the scope of the statute before. In 2004, the justices heard Sosa v. Álvarez-Machaín, a case involving the arrest and trial of Humberto Álvarez-Machaín, a Mexican national charged with the kidnapping and murder of a US Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in 1985. Mr. Álvarez-Machaín asserted that the DEA had hired several Mexicans to capture him, and argued that his capture was illegal.
In that case, the judges found that the law was probably originally understood to allow for charges under three specific violations of international law: violations of laws allowing safe conduct abroad, violations of diplomatic privileges and criminal offenses.
Although the Supreme Court has not recognized other causes of action under this statute, lower courts have found many.
The dispute heard Tuesday involves the Victims Protection Act, a 1991 law that allows lawsuits in US courts against people who participate in torture or extrajudicial killings while serving under the authority of a foreign country.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for Falun Gong members, Paul L. Hoffman, urged jurors to open the way for a trial, saying Cisco helped create a “custom surveillance system” that allowed the Chinese government to target the religious minority for “pagan treatment.”
Kannon K. Shanmugam, a lawyer for Cisco, said that allowing the case to proceed “would be a significant expansion” of the current law and would raise “serious foreign policy concerns.”
A lawyer for the Trump administration, Curtis E. Gannon, the deputy attorney general, told the justices that “the lower courts were being too permissive” in allowing such cases to proceed.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, two of the court’s chief justices, appeared to be more skeptical of Cisco’s arguments and the Trump administration.
A decision in the case is expected to be finalized in June or early July.
