Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1043_7648.pdf
Page Number: 14

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

regardless of any other conduct that occurred in U. S. terri-
tory.”  RJR  Nabisco,  579  U. S.,  at  337;  see,  e.g.,  Western-
Geco, 585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6–8); Nestlé, 593 U. S., at 
___–___ (slip op., at 4–5); Morrison, 561 U. S., at 266–267, 
271–273. 

These  holdings  were  not,  as  JUSTICE  SOTOMAYOR  sug-
gests,  premised  on  this  Court’s  “first  conclud[ing]  (or  as-
sum[ing] without deciding) that the focus of the provision
at  issue  was  conduct.”  Post,  at  9.   They  were  unambigu-
ously part of this Court’s articulation of the two-step frame-
work, and, in each case, these holdings came before we be-
gan analyzing the focus of the provisions at issue.  For this 
reason, none of our cases has ever held that statutory focus
was dispositive at step two of our framework.  To the con-
trary, we have acknowledged that courts do “not need to de-
termine [a] statute’s ‘focus’ ” when all conduct regarding the 
violations  “ ‘took  place  outside  the  United  States.’ ”    RJR 
Nabisco,  579  U. S.,  at  337  (quoting  Kiobel,  569  U. S.,  at 
124); see, e.g., Nestlé, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5) (“To
plead  facts  sufficient  to  support  a  domestic  application  of
the [Alien Tort Statute], plaintiffs must allege more domes-
tic conduct than general corporate activity”).  That conclu-
sion, as well as the decisions applying it, are inexplicable 
under a focus-only standard.  See supra, at 5. 

Beyond straying from established precedent, a focus-only
approach would create headaches for lower courts required
to grapple with this new approach.  For statutes (like this
one) regulating conduct, the location of the conduct relevant 
to the focus provides a clear signal at both steps of our two-
step framework.  See RJR Nabisco, 579 U. S., at 335, 337. 
Under  JUSTICE  SOTOMAYOR’s  standard,  by  contrast,  liti-
gants  and  lower  courts  are  told  that  the  step-two  inquiry
turns on the “ ‘focus’ ” alone, which (as we have said) “can be
‘conduct,’  ‘parties,’  or  ‘interests’  that  Congress  sought  to
protect or regulate.”  Post, at 8; see WesternGeco, 585 U. S.,