The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, January 9, 2026, agreed to decide whether the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) permit private suits for aiding and abetting serious international-law violations. The Court granted certiorari in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I. The underlying suit accuses the U.S. technology company and two of its executives of supplying surveillance technology that the Chinese government allegedly used to identify and interrogate Falun Gong practitioners.

The Cisco grant was one of five that the justices announced on the afternoon of January 9, according to a brief order list. The Court will release a longer list of orders from its January 9 conference at 9:30 a.m. EST on Monday, January 12.

What is the underlying dispute?

The plaintiffs sued Cisco and two executives under the ATS, which allows noncitizens to bring suit in federal court for serious violations of international human-rights law. They also invoked the TVPA, which creates civil liability for torture and extrajudicial killing and permits victims to sue their overseas assailants in U.S. courts. The complaint alleges that Cisco developed and sold a surveillance and internal-security system to the Chinese government, which the regime then used to locate and interrogate Falun Gong practitioners.

In July 2023, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Cisco sought Supreme Court review, contending that neither the ATS nor the TVPA recognizes aiding-and-abetting liability for private plaintiffs. The Trump administration, in a December 2025 brief filed at the Court's invitation, urged the justices to address those questions.

What does the case turn on?

The Court granted review to resolve two principal questions. First, do the ATS and the TVPA permit private suits for aiding and abetting violations? Second, does the ATS supply a cause of action against corporations at all? The answers will shape the scope of corporate liability under long-standing human-rights statutes.

A ruling for Cisco could foreclose ATS and TVPA claims against U.S. corporations whose products allegedly enable foreign-government abuses. That outcome would narrow a litigation pathway that practitioners have used since the 1980s. A ruling for the plaintiffs would extend aiding-and-abetting liability into the international-human-rights context, with downstream effects on corporate due-diligence practices, transactional risk assessments, and settlement leverage in similar suits.

What other cases did the Court take?

The justices granted review in four additional matters on January 9:

• FCC v. AT&T and Verizon Communications v. FCC — challenges to a federal law that lets the Federal Communications Commission assess and enforce monetary penalties without guaranteeing the defendant a right to a jury trial. The two will be argued together.
• Sripetch v. SEC — whether the Securities and Exchange Commission may require a defendant to disgorge profits or benefits without proving that investors suffered financial harm.
• Bondi v. Lau — an immigration dispute in which the government seeks to deport a lawful permanent resident convicted of trademark counterfeiting and sentenced to probation.

What is the timetable?

The five cases will likely be argued in April 2026. Decisions are expected by late June or early July.