By Reuters
Publication Date: 2026-04-28 16:17:00
The U.S. Supreme Court confronted a case on Tuesday with broad implications for human rights litigation in American courts, a long-running lawsuit brought by members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement who have accused Cisco Systems of facilitating religious persecution in China.
The justices heard arguments in Cisco’s appeal of a lower court’s 2023 ruling that breathed new life into the 2011 lawsuit, brought under the Alien Tort Statute, that accused the company of knowingly developing technology that allowed China’s government to surveil and persecute Falun Gong members.
San Jose, California-based Cisco is urging the Supreme Court to further limit the scope of that 1789 law, which lets non-U.S. citizens seek damages in American courts for violations of international law. The court in a series of decisions since 2013 has limited the law’s reach, making it more difficult to hold U.S. corporations legally liable for human rights abuses.
President Donald Trump’s…
