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

⁠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. …