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People around the world have been horrified at the role that technology companies like Cisco, Yahoo!, and Sandvine have played in helping governments commit gross human rights abuses. That’s why EFF has consistently called out technology companies, and American companies in particular, that allow their internet surveillance and censorship products and services to be used as tools of repression and persecution, rather than tools to uplift humanity. Yet legal mechanisms to hold companies accountable for their roles in human rights violations are few and far between.
The Supreme Court has now further narrowed one mechanism: the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). We now call on Congress to fill the gaps where the Court has failed to act.
The Supreme Court recently issued an opinion in Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe, in which we filed an amicus brief. Former child slaves on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire claimed that two American chocolate companies, Nestlé USA and Cargill, facilitated their abuse at the hands of the farm operators by providing training, fertilizer, tools, and cash in exchange for the exclusive right to buy cocoa. The plaintiffs sued under the ATS, a law first passed by Congress in 1789, which allows foreign nationals to bring civil claims in U.S. federal court against defendants who violated “the law of nations or a treaty of the United States,” which many courts have recognized should
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Read the original article: Supreme Court Narrows Ability to Hold U.S. Corporations Accountable for Facilitating Human Rights Abuses Abroad