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On March 13, 2025, the NAM filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review and reverse a 9th Circuit decision recognizing aiding and abetting liability under the Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act. In this case, the plaintiffs, practitioners of the Falun Gon religion, allege that Cisco’s technology enabled the Chinese government to commit human rights abuses against them in China and seek to hold Cisco liable for those abuses. The plaintiffs argue that Cisco aided and abetted or conspired with Chinese officials in the human rights abuses in violation of the ATS and TVPA. After the 9th Circuit reversed a trial court dismissal and allowed the claims to proceed, Cisco appealed.

We argue that allowing the 9th Circuit’s decision to stand will harm U.S. businesses’ competitive advantage by subjecting them to sprawling, resource-draining litigation for conduct they had no control over while their foreign competitors are not subject to such claims. Expanded ATS litigation would chill direct foreign investment by U.S. businesses in foreign markets, which enables sales to customers that U.S. manufacturers could not otherwise reach and generates revenues that can be re-invested domestically. Happily, the Supreme Court granted certiorari on January 9, 2026. At the merits stage, the NAM filed a second amicus brief emphasizing the negative consequences that would result if the 9th Circuit's decision is left intact. Holding manufacturers liable for human rights violations they did not commit is an abusive use of the U.S. tort system and risks severe and unfair reputational harm for companies and their leaders.

On January 29, 2025, the NAM filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review and reverse a troubling 8th Circuit decision allowing foreign plaintiffs to bring claims in U.S. courts based on alleged injuries that occurred abroad. When U.S. companies invest in foreign industrial or commercial activities, they reasonably expect that litigation involving environmental harms—or similar mass tort claims focused on overseas operations and overseas injuries—will occur in the courts of the foreign jurisdiction at issue, absent an agreement stating otherwise or some other fact-specific reason why U.S. courts would be the logical, efficient, and expected forum. In this case, however, the 8th Circuit blessed an end-run around such expectations and created a playbook for mass-tort plaintiffs alleging foreign harms to proceed in the United States. The case arose after Peruvian citizens sued the defendants in Missouri state court asserting negligence claims stemming from defendants’ mining operations in Peru. The defendants moved to dismiss the case on the ground that it was improperly brought in a U.S. court, but the trial court denied the defendants’ motion and the 8th Circuit affirmed on appeal.

We explain in our brief that if the 8th Circuit’s decision stands, it threatens to invite a wave of foreign torts into U.S. courts, seeking to impose state-law standards on the overseas operations of foreign entities with U.S. parent companies. This approach would undermine the regulatory certainty U.S. manufacturers need to invest in overseas operations and weaken the supply chains that are critical to manufacturers’ ability thrive.

Unfortunately, on March 3, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari.