Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1043_7648.pdf
Page Number: 32.0

10 

ABITRON AUSTRIA GMBH v. HETRONIC INT’L, INC. 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in judgment 

The Court’s transformative approach thwarts Congress’ 
ability  to  regulate  important  “interests”  or  “parties”  that 
Congress has the power to regulate.  WesternGeco LLC, 585 
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6).  Some statutes may have a stat-
utory focus that is not strictly conduct and that implicates
some conduct abroad.  Cf., e.g., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd 
v. Empagran S. A., 542 U. S. 155, 165 (2004) (recognizing 
the long-established view that U. S. antitrust laws “reflect
a legislative effort to redress domestic antitrust injury that
foreign anticompetitive conduct has caused” (emphasis de-
leted)).  Under the Court’s new categorical rule, those stat-
utes may not cover relevant conduct occurring abroad, even 
if  that  conduct  impacts  domestic  interests  that  Congress
sought to protect.  At bottom, by reframing the inquiry at 
step two as a conduct-only test, the Court’s new rule frus-
trates a key function of the presumption against extraterri-
toriality: to discern congressional meaning and “preserv[e] 
a stable background against which Congress can legislate
with predictable effects” to protect domestic interests, Mor-
rison, 561 U. S., at 261, including those of U. S. trademark 
owners and consumers. 

The Court’s analysis is also inconsistent with Steele.  Ac-

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(2016),  the  majority  argues  that  the  Court  has  already  “acknowledged 
that courts do not need to determine [a] statute’s ‘focus’ when all conduct 
regarding the violations took place outside the United States. ”  Ante, at 
11 (some internal quotation marks omitted).  The portion of RJR Nabisco 
that the majority relies upon merely described the Court’s holding in Ki-
obel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569 U. S. 108 (2013), a case that did 
not involve step two.  In Kiobel, the Court held that the statute did not 
rebut  the  presumption  against  extraterritoriality  at  step  one  and  de-
clined to address step two of the analysis (including determining the stat-
ute’s focus) because the claims at issue did not “touch and concern the 
territory of the United States” other than through “mere corporate pres-
ence.”  Id., at 124–125.  Kiobel does not offer any guidance on what con-
stitutes a domestic application of a statute at step two.