- Court: United States Supreme Court
- Area(s) of Law: Civil Procedure
- Date Filed: June 17, 2021
- Case #: 19-416
- Judge(s)/Court Below: THOMAS, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I and II, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BAR- RETT, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Part III, in which GOR- SUCH and KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined. GORSUCH, J., filed a concurring opin- ion, in which ALITO, J., joined as to Part I, and in which KAVANAUGH, J., joined as to Part II. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which BREYER and KAGAN, JJ., joined. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
- Full Text Opinion
Petitioners, U.S. based corporations, bought and provided resources to cocoa farms on the Ivory Coast in exchange for exclusive purchasing rights, but failed to sanction the farm's use of child slavery despite knowing or “should have known” that the farms were exploiting children. Petitioners appealed a Ninth Circuit decision that allowed Respondents—a group of West-African child trafficking victims—to file a claim in federal court because Petitioners allegedly made operational decisions that promoted operations of cocoa farms that participated in child enslavement. Although the Alien Tort Statute gives federal courts jurisdiction to hear certain civil actions filed by aliens for extraterritorial application, the Supreme Court held that Respondents did not plead sufficient facts to support a domestic application and that “operational decisions”—common to most corporate business—did not draw a sufficient connection between Respondents’ claim and domestic conduct. Further, the Court reasoned that this type of tort has not been domestically defined by Congress and therefore there was no cause of action to be claimed. REVERSED.