ATS “Door Closed” to Judicially Created Causes of Action; TVPA Does Not Imply Aiding-and-Abetting Liability

Introduction

Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe (U.S. Supreme Court, June 23, 2026) arose from allegations by Falun Gong practitioners that the Chinese Government persecuted them and that Cisco Systems, Inc., and certain executives enabled that persecution by developing surveillance tools used to identify, apprehend, and abuse them. Plaintiffs (foreign nationals) sued under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), asserting aiding-and-abetting liability for alleged violations of international law (including torture and crimes against humanity). One plaintiff also sued two Cisco executives under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), alleging aiding and abetting torture.

The central issues were: (1) whether federal courts may recognize (and thus “create”) an ATS cause of action for aiding-and-abetting violations of international law; and (2) whether the TVPA’s cause of action against anyone who “subjects” a person to torture includes aiding-and-abetting liability.

Summary of the Opinion

The Court (Justice Barrett, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh) reversed the Ninth Circuit. It held:

  1. No new ATS causes of action: Courts may not create new causes of action for violations of international norms under the ATS. The Court described Sosa’s suggestion of narrow judicial authority as a “fiction” that subsequent separation-of-powers doctrine has rendered impossible to satisfy, characterizing the set of permissible “new” ATS causes as a “null set.” Because courts cannot create new ATS causes of action, there is “necessarily no liability” for aiding and abetting under the ATS.
  2. No aiding-and-abetting under the TVPA: The TVPA does not provide for aiding-and-abetting liability because its text does not mention “aiding and abetting,” and “subjects” connotes direct causation rather than the broader secondary liability recognized in aiding-and-abetting doctrine.

Justice Jackson concurred in the TVPA result but criticized the majority’s use of Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A. as establishing a “magic words” requirement. Justice Sotomayor dissented, arguing the Court effectively overruled Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain and improperly foreclosed most ATS litigation, and also that the TVPA should encompass aiding-and-abetting liability.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

1) The ATS framework and its contraction

  • Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004): The Court’s starting point is Sosa’s statement that “the ATS is a jurisdictional statute creating no new causes of action,” while acknowledging Sosa’s simultaneous openness to “narrow” judicial recognition of new claims. Cisco reframes Sosa’s second-step “prudence” inquiry as incompatible with modern separation-of-powers doctrine and declares the door that Sosa “cracked” is now closed.
  • Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (2013) and Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe (2021): These cases are used to emphasize that ATS litigation has acute foreign-policy implications and is already constrained by the presumption against extraterritoriality and limits on what domestic conduct can support ATS jurisdiction.
  • Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC (2018): The majority leans on separate writings—particularly Justice Gorsuch’s observation that it is hard to think of a case where a new ATS cause of action would not carry detrimental foreign-policy consequences. The case also supports the theme that ATS expansion implicates delicate foreign relations.
  • FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. (2026): Cited for the proposition that the Court has “rejected the practice of fashioning rights of action as [it] see[s] fit,” reinforcing that creating causes of action is fundamentally legislative.
  • Egbert v. Boule (2022) and Ziglar v. Abbasi (2017): The majority imports the Court’s modern anti-implication approach (developed prominently in the Bivens line) and converts Sosa’s “great caution” into a categorical bar: if there is even a “single sound reason” to think Congress might not want a judicially created damages remedy, courts must refrain. The majority treats ATS cases as always presenting at least one such reason (collateral consequences and foreign-policy risk).
  • Edwards v. Vannoy (2021) and Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC (2015): Used to justify abandoning Sosa’s open-ended prediction by arguing there are no meaningful reliance interests and that post-Sosa “growth of judicial doctrine” supports the shift.

2) Textual limits on aiding-and-abetting liability

  • Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A. (1994): The key authority for the TVPA holding. The majority treats statutory silence as dispositive: if Congress intends civil aiding-and-abetting liability, it knows how to say so. It also analogizes Central Bank’s rejection of “directly or indirectly” language as insufficient to reach aiders and abettors.
  • Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh (2023): Cited for the distinction between direct causation and the broader range of assistance captured by aiding-and-abetting doctrine; used to reinforce that “subjecting” someone to torture is narrower than aiding-and-abetting.
  • Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores (1975): Quoted in Central Bank and invoked here for the idea that Congress has “little trouble” imposing aiding-and-abetting liability expressly.
  • Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority (2012): The majority acknowledges its statement that the TVPA contemplates some liability for those who do not personally execute torture (e.g., ordering it), but distinguishes that from the broader sweep of aiding-and-abetting liability.
  • Lower-court and historical ATS cases—Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, Kadic v. Karadžić, In re Estate of Marcos, Human Rights Litigation, Abebe-Jira v. Negewo, Bolchos v. Darrel, and Moxon v. The Fanny—serve as contextual markers for the ATS’s modern revival and early usage, but the majority’s rule largely prevents their trajectory from continuing via judicial expansion.

Legal Reasoning

1) ATS: from “vigilant doorkeeping” to categorical closure

The majority’s core move is to treat Sosa’s two-step framework as internally conflicted and, in light of subsequent doctrine, unsustainable. It accepts Sosa’s “jurisdiction only” premise but rejects Sosa’s allowance for judicial creation of new causes of action.

The Court gives two principal reasons. First, it elevates Sosa’s foreign-policy caution into a near-absolute: because ATS claims inherently involve “a norm of international character” and often require adjudicating foreign sovereign misconduct (even when defendants are American), the risk of adverse foreign-policy consequences is pervasive. Second, it grounds the decision in separation of powers: creating causes of action is for Congress, especially where the Constitution assigns Congress the power to “define and punish” offenses against the law of nations (Art. I, §8, cl. 10).

The doctrinal engine is the Court’s modern anti-implication principle (expressed in Egbert v. Boule and Ziglar v. Abbasi): the presence of “even a single sound reason” to defer to Congress ends the inquiry. In ATS cases, the majority says, such a reason is always present (collateral consequences and foreign-policy sensitivity). The Court further points to the TVPA as an “alternative remedial structure” that counsels against judicial creation of additional damages remedies in adjacent terrain.

Having eliminated judicial authority to create any new ATS cause of action, the Court disposes of aiding-and-abetting ATS liability not by parsing international law, but by deeming the very enterprise of recognition/creation impermissible. Aiding and abetting falls with the broader rule.

2) TVPA: “subjects” requires direct causal responsibility, not assistance at a remove

The Court treats the TVPA’s text as decisive. Because Congress created an express cause of action for a person who “subjects” another to torture and did not mention “aiding and abetting,” the Court reads the statute to require a direct causal connection between the defendant and the victim’s torture (drawing on dictionary definitions of “subject” as “to cause to undergo or submit to”). Aiding-and-abetting doctrine, by contrast, can reach actors one or more steps removed, whose conduct is supportive rather than directly causative.

Justice Jackson’s partial dissent highlights an important methodological dispute: she agrees the TVPA does not encompass aiding-and-abetting liability here, but rejects the majority’s suggestion that Congress must use the “aid/abet” words as a general rule, reading Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A. as more contextual.

Impact

1) ATS human-rights litigation: a structural foreclosure

The decision’s most consequential effect is its categorical bar on judicial recognition of new ATS causes of action. Post-Cisco, plaintiffs cannot rely on federal courts to extend ATS remedies to additional international-law norms or theories of liability when Congress has not supplied a cause of action. The Court formally “does not disturb” Sosa’s jurisdictional holding and does not “revisit” Sosa’s assumption about claims corresponding to Blackstone’s three paradigms (safe-conduct violations, infringement of ambassadors’ rights, piracy), but the practical message is that ATS civil enforcement is confined to what is already historically entrenched and not judicially expandable.

The ruling also changes litigation strategy: ATS complaints will increasingly rise or fall on whether an asserted claim can be characterized as fitting within the narrow historically contemplated set (and within territorial limits imposed by Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe). Where that characterization is doubtful, plaintiffs must look to statutory alternatives (TVPA if applicable), state-law tort theories, or nonjudicial avenues (sanctions, diplomacy, international mechanisms).

2) TVPA: narrowing secondary-liability exposure

The TVPA holding forecloses civil aiding-and-abetting claims under that statute absent express congressional authorization. Plaintiffs must plead (and ultimately prove) that a defendant “subjected” them to torture in the Court’s causation-oriented sense, rather than merely assisted someone else who tortured. The majority leaves room for some indirect-but-still-causative roles (it cites ordering torture as an example from Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority), yet draws a firm line against importing generalized aiding-and-abetting concepts.

3) Separation-of-powers messaging

The majority’s approach announces a broader jurisprudential stance: when causes of action are not legislatively created, courts should presume they lack authority to supply them—especially when foreign relations or the law of nations is involved. The dissent (Justice Sotomayor) frames this as an implicit overruling of Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain and a retreat from the ATS’s historical function; the majority frames it as correcting Sosa’s unrealized premise and aligning ATS doctrine with the Court’s contemporary approach to implied remedies.

Complex Concepts Simplified

  • ATS (Alien Tort Statute): A statute giving federal courts jurisdiction over certain civil suits by aliens for torts “committed in violation of the law of nations.” The key fight is whether it merely opens the courthouse door (jurisdiction) or also lets judges recognize enforceable civil claims (causes of action).
  • Cause of action vs. jurisdiction: Jurisdiction is a court’s power to hear a case; a cause of action is the legal right to sue for a remedy. The majority says ATS provides the former, and courts may not supply the latter.
  • Judicially created (implied) causes of action: Judge-made remedies not spelled out by Congress. The majority treats modern separation-of-powers doctrine as sharply limiting (nearly eliminating) this practice.
  • Aiding and abetting: A form of secondary liability that can reach those who knowingly assist another’s wrongful act. The Court holds that, without a valid ATS cause of action, there is no ATS aiding-and-abetting liability; and that the TVPA’s text does not itself create aiding-and-abetting liability.
  • “Alternative remedial structure”: If Congress has provided a different remedial scheme, courts are even less justified in inventing an additional damages remedy. The majority treats the TVPA as such a structure in the ATS-adjacent space.
  • Presumption against extraterritoriality: A rule (applied in ATS cases via Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.) that statutes are presumed not to apply to conduct abroad absent clear indication—further limiting ATS suits.

Conclusion

Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe establishes two decisive rules: (1) federal courts may not create new causes of action under the ATS for violations of international norms, effectively ending Sosa’s open-ended invitation to limited judicial recognition; and (2) the TVPA does not encompass civil aiding-and-abetting liability, because its text imposes liability on one who “subjects” another to torture and does not speak in aiding-and-abetting terms.

The decision substantially narrows U.S. courts’ role in civil accountability litigation tied to international human-rights abuses, shifting the center of gravity to Congress (for any expansion), to the political branches (for foreign-policy tools), and to alternative legal avenues where available.