Washington (United States) (AFP) – The US Supreme Court heard a bid by Cisco on Tuesday to toss out a lawsuit that alleges the US tech giant should be held liable for persecution in China of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The case stems from a 2011 suit filed by a dozen Chinese nationals and a US citizen who claim Cisco designed an internet surveillance and censorship network called “Golden Shield” that was used by the Chinese government to track down Falun Gong devotees.
The California-based computer networking giant rejects the accusations that it “aided and abetted” human rights abuses against members of the Falun Gong, which has been banned in China since 1999. “Cisco vigorously disputes those allegations,” Kannon Shanmugam, a lawyer for the company, told the justices during the Supreme Court session. A federal district court judge dismissed the suit in 2014, but it was revived by an appeals court in 2023, prompting Cisco to take it to the top US court.
The case rests on a law passed by Congress in 1789, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows foreign nationals to seek redress in American courts for violations of international law. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court has limited the scope of ATS claims in several recent cases involving US corporations, and it appeared likely following Tuesday’s oral arguments to also side with Cisco.
Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the justices that Cisco provided “a customized surveillance system designed to identify Falun Gong believers to Chinese authorities for detention and forced conversion through torture and other barbaric treatment.” “This court should not give the green light to US corporations acting from the United States to help foreign governments commit torture or extrajudicial killing,” Hoffman said. “Under Cisco’s theory, even the corporate actors who provided the poison gas for Nazi crematoria would not be liable,” he added.
The Trump administration has weighed in on Cisco’s side, and Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon told the justices that allowing the case to go ahead would have implications for US foreign policy. “The entire case is parasitic on having to prove that foreign government officials engaged in serious human rights violations in their own countries,” Gannon said. “That is necessarily going to raise foreign policy concerns in many cases.” The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case in June or early July.
© 2024 AFP
