Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe
The Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by men who say they were trafficked as children and enslaved on West African cocoa farms against U.S. food companies Nestlé and Cargill, ruling that the alleged misconduct — supplying training and resources to overseas farms — happened abroad and could not support a claim under the federal law at issue.
The decision raises the bar for foreign victims seeking to hold U.S. companies accountable in American courts: pointing to a company's U.S. headquarters or ordinary domestic decision-making is not enough to make the lawsuit a domestic one under the Alien Tort Statute.
“To plead facts sufficient to support a domestic application of the ATS, plaintiffs must allege more domestic conduct than general corporate activity.”
The Court's core holding on what plaintiffs must show to bring an ATS lawsuit based on overseas conduct.
How it got here: A federal district court dismissed the suit as improperly extraterritorial; the Ninth Circuit reversed in part, allowing claims against U.S. corporations to proceed; Nestlé and Cargill asked the Supreme Court to step in and the Court agreed.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Six men from Mali say they were trafficked as children into Ivory Coast and forced to work on cocoa farms. U.S. companies Nestlé USA and Cargill did not own those farms but bought cocoa from them and gave the farms training, fertilizer, tools, and cash in exchange for exclusive purchasing rights. The men sued the companies under a 1789 federal law that allows foreign citizens to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts for violations of international law, arguing the companies' financial and logistical support helped enable child slavery.
The question before the Court
Could people who say they were trafficked as children and forced to work on cocoa farms in West Africa sue U.S. food companies in federal court for helping those overseas farms continue to operate?
The Court's answer
No — not based on what the men alleged. The Court held that the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), the 1789 law that lets foreign citizens sue in U.S. courts for violations of international law, does not cover overseas conduct unless plaintiffs show the specific conduct at the heart of their lawsuit happened in the United States. The men argued that because both companies made key business decisions from their U.S. offices, their claims counted as domestic. The Court disagreed.
The actual conduct they said enabled their enslavement — companies giving farms training, tools, and money — happened in Ivory Coast. Pointing to a company's U.S. headquarters, or to the fact that executives made general operational decisions domestically, does not satisfy the law's requirement. Ordinary corporate decision-making common to nearly every company is not enough to establish the domestic connection the ATS requires.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Foreign victims of human rights abuses who try to hold U.S. companies legally responsible in American courts must now show that specific harmful conduct — not just routine corporate operations — occurred in the United States. Companies that buy products from overseas suppliers, or provide services to foreign farms, will not face liability under this law simply because their executives work in American offices.
What changes now
The case is sent back to lower courts for further proceedings. The former child slaves may attempt to refile with more specific allegations of conduct that occurred in the United States. The Supreme Court left open several significant questions — including whether U.S. corporations can be sued under the ATS at all and whether aiding-and-abetting theories are available under that law — which may be litigated in future cases. Congress could also choose to pass new legislation explicitly addressing this kind of claim.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether U.S. corporations are immune from ATS suits — eight justices indicated they are not, but no majority opinion resolved the question. The Court also did not decide whether aiding-and-abetting claims can ever be brought under the ATS, or what level of intent such claims would require.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
In Part III of his opinion, which only Gorsuch and Kavanaugh joined, Thomas argued courts should categorically refuse to create any new causes of action under the ATS beyond the three specific international law violations recognized in 1789 — violations of safe conduct, interference with ambassadors, and piracy. He reasoned that any newer ATS claim inevitably raises foreign-policy concerns that belong to Congress and the executive, not judges, and that Congress's own deliberate, evolving approach to human-trafficking legislation shows it prefers to make these choices itself.
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
Gorsuch wrote separately to address two points the majority declined to reach. First (joined by Alito), he argued that corporations should not be immune from ATS suits — the statute draws no distinction between individual and corporate defendants, and early American law routinely allowed tort suits against corporations. Second (joined by Kavanaugh), he went further than Thomas, arguing Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain was wrong to leave open any possibility of judicially created ATS causes of action; the power to create new legal rights belongs to Congress, not courts, and the door Sosa left ajar should have stayed shut.
Concurrence in part — Justice Sotomayor
Sotomayor joined the majority's extraterritoriality holding (Parts I and II) but declined to join Part III, arguing it would effectively overrule Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain without saying so. She contended the First Congress deliberately empowered federal courts to recognize international law violations and provide foreign citizens a forum for redress — a task Thomas would improperly strip from the judiciary. She would keep Sosa's two-step framework intact and reject any categorical rule limiting courts to only three 1789-era torts.
Dissent — Justice Alito
“Corporate status does not justify special immunity.”Alito's view, shared by eight justices, that U.S. corporations can be sued under the Alien Tort Statute.
Alito dissented from the Court's choice of which question to decide. He agreed (relying on Gorsuch's Part I reasoning) that corporations can be sued under the ATS and that corporate status does not confer special immunity. But he would not have reached the extraterritoriality question at all, arguing it required the Court to assume answers to too many unresolved legal issues — giving the decision the character of an advisory opinion. He would instead have vacated the lower court's ruling and remanded for further proceedings in the district court.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied a two-step framework for deciding whether a federal law applies to overseas events. Step one asks whether the law clearly signals it extends abroad. For the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) — a 1789 law that lets foreign citizens sue in U.S. courts for violations of international law — the Court had already answered that question in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (2013): the ATS does not reach conduct that occurs outside the United States.
- Under step two, when a law does not extend abroad by its own terms, plaintiffs must show that the conduct at the center of their claim happened in the United States. The Court assumed, without deciding, the most favorable possible reading of which conduct the ATS is primarily concerned with — and found the former child slaves still fell short.
- The men identified the companies' assistance to overseas farms — providing training, fertilizer, tools, and cash — as the conduct that enabled their enslavement. All of that activity happened in Ivory Coast, not the United States. The companies' U.S. headquarters and domestic business decisions did not change the overseas character of the relevant conduct.
- The Ninth Circuit had allowed the suit to proceed because the companies allegedly made 'major operational decisions' in the United States. The Court rejected this reasoning: pointing to routine corporate decision-making at U.S. headquarters is no better than simply noting a company has a U.S. presence — something the Court had previously held was never enough to make an ATS claim domestic.
- In Part III of his opinion, joined only by Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Justice Thomas argued courts should go further and refuse to create any new causes of action under the ATS beyond the three types of international law violations recognized in 1789. He reasoned that newer claims inevitably raise foreign-policy questions that belong to Congress — as illustrated by Congress's own careful, evolving approach to private remedies in human-trafficking legislation — not to judges.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (569 U. S. 108)
The Court reaffirmed that the ATS does not extend to overseas conduct, applying Kiobel's framework directly to dismiss the case.