Hello, this is Jeff Burnham reading the Supreme Court syllabus in Cisco Systems Incorporated et al. v. Doe et al, surgery to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Argued April 28, 2026, decided June 23, 2026. Plaintiffs contend that the Chinese government persecuted them because of their religious beliefs, and that Cisco Systems Incorporated enabled that persecution by developing surveillance technology that allowed China to identify and apprehend them. Plaintiffs allege that Cisco and its executives are liable for aiding and abetting violations of international law, citing the Alien Tort Statute or ATS. One plaintiff also seeks to hold two Cisco executives liable for aiding and abetting violations of the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, or TVBA. The ATS grants federal district courts jurisdiction over any civil action by an alien for a tort only committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States. The ATS lay mostly dormant for two centuries after its enactment. In the last few decades, however, litigants have urged courts to allow private rights of action under the ATS for various alleged human rights abuses. In Sosa v. Alvarez Machine, 542-US 692, a Supreme Court case from 2004, this court held that the ATS is a jurisdictional statute creating no new causes of action. At the same time, and in considerable tension with that point, the court said that the ATS allows for the possibility of new judicially created causes of action to enforce norms of international law. Though SOSA did not close the door on judicially created rights of action under the ATS, SOSA emphasized the narrowness of its view and underscored the need for vigilant doorkeeping. SOSA proposed a two-step framework for creating those causes of action. First, a plaintiff must show that the norm has a definite content and acceptance among civilized nations. Second, a plaintiff must show that it would be prudent for the court to create the proposed cause of action when the political branches have not acted. Since SOSA, the court has never created an ATS right of action. In this case, the District Court dismissed plaintiff's complaint, but the Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. The Ninth Circuit focused on whether aiding and abetting liability may be imposed under the ATS. At SOSA's first step, the Ninth Circuit found that aiding and abetting liability is sufficiently definite and universal to be a viable form of liability under the ATS. At the second step, it concluded that neither foreign relations concerns nor deference to Congress supplied a prudential reason to decline to recognize aiding or abetting liability. The Ninth Circuit also held that the TVPA encompasses claims against those who aid and abet torture. The court granted Sir Sherrare to determine whether Cisco may be held liable for aiding and abetting offenses under the ATS and whether two of its executives may be held liable under the TVPA for aiding and abetting torture. Held, courts may not create new causes of action for violations of international norms under the ATS. Two points drive the court's decision. First, judicial authority under SOSA's second step was narrow at the outset. SOSA instructed federal courts to exercise great caution in adapting the law of nations to private rights, and to assess the practical consequences of creating new liability under the ATS, including the risks of adverse foreign policy consequences. Because ATS cases by their nature implicate foreign policy, it is difficult to think of a case in which a court might safely conclude that a new ATS cause of action would not have detrimental foreign policy consequences. Second, the power to create causes of action belongs to Congress. The court has rejected the practice of fashioning rights of action as it sees fit. Congress is better positioned than courts to evaluate the policy trade-offs of creating liability. This is especially true in an area like this one, where the Constitution expressly delegates authority to Congress to define and punish offenses against the law of nations. For that reason, creating any cause of action is an extraordinary act that places great stress on the separation of powers. Because of these concerns, SOSA consciously designed a test that would be extremely difficult to meet. But what SOSA made difficult, subsequent legal developments have made impossible. Since SOSA was decided, the court has firmly committed to the view that judicially created causes of action offend the separation of powers in almost every circumstance. Recent cases emphasize that if there are sound reasons to think Congress might doubt the efficacy or necessity of a damages remedy, the courts must refrain from creating it. In the ATS context, there will always be at least a single sound reason to conclude that Congress might not want the judiciary to take the lead. SOSU itself identified one applicable in every case, the possible collateral consequences of making international rules privately actionable. And Congress has created an alternative remedial structure, the TVPA, which precludes the creation of a cause of action. The court, therefore, will not continue to indulge the fiction that creating new ATS causes of action is sometimes appropriate. Correcting SOSA's unfulfilled prediction will not upset reliance interests and will promote civility. SOSA was overly optimistic in its prediction that there might be a narrow class of cases in which courts may create ATS actions without infringing on the prerogatives of the political branches. In truth, this class is a null set, and because courts cannot create new rights of action to remedy violations of international law, there is necessarily no liability for aiding and abetting such violations. The TVPA, which contains an express cause of action against someone who subjects another to torture, does not provide for aiding and abetting liability. In Central Bank of Denver NA versus First Interstate Bank of Denver NA, 511 U.S. 164, a Supreme Court case from 1994, the court held that Section 10B of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 does not create civil aiding and abetting liability because the statute does not mention aiding and abetting, differentiating Section 10B from other civil statutes in which Congress expressly provided for that specialized form of liability. The TVPA similarly nowhere mentions aiding and abetting liability, and that silence is enough to settle the issue. Plaintiffs argue that subjects in the TVPA is broad enough to include aiding and abetting liability, but it is not. To subject another to torture means to cause to undergo or submit to, signaling a causal connection between the torturer and victim. Aiding and abetting liability, by contrast, encompasses many forms of assistance provided by those who are one or more steps removed from the torturer. Central Bank rejected a similar argument that the phrase directly or indirectly authorized aiding and abetting liability, explaining that aiding and abetting liability extends beyond persons who engage, even indirectly, in a prescribed activity. The same analysis applies here. Aiding and abetting liability sweeps more broadly than the language Congress chose. Reversed and remanded. Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the court in which Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Thomas Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh joined. Justice Jackson filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Justice Kagan joined. Justice Sodomaor filed a dissenting opinion in which Justices Kagan and Jackson joined as to Parts 1 through 3 and 5. Thank you for listening. Please help us by rating and reviewing this podcast. And like I tell you every time, please subscribe so you can get all of the OT 25 decisions automatically delivered to your device as we go through this busy month of June. If you wish to communicate with the podcast, please email us at ScotusDisions at gmail.com. Thanks and have a great day.