Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-499_1a7d.pdf
Page Number: 27

Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

21 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of KENNEDY, J. 

Sosa, supra, at 726. 

According  to  petitioners,  the  TVPA  is  not  a  useful 
guidepost  because  Congress  limited  liability  under  that 
statute  to  “individuals”  out  of  concern  for  the  sovereign 
immunity  of  foreign  governmental  entities,  not  out  of
general hesitation about corporate liability under the ATS. 
The argument seems to run as follows: The TVPA provides 
a  right  of  action  to  victims  of  torture  and  extrajudicial 
killing,  and  under  international  law  those  human-rights 
violations  require  state  action.    For  a  corporation’s  em-
ployees to violate these norms therefore would require the 
corporation  to  be  an  instrumentality  of  a  foreign  state  or
other sovereign entity.  That concern is absent, petitioners
insist, for crimes that lack a state-action requirement—for 
example,  genocide,  slavery,  or,  in  the  present  case,  the 
financing of terrorists.

At  least  two  flaws  inhere  in  this  argument.   First,  in 
Mohamad  the  Court  unanimously  rejected  petitioners’ 
account  of  the  TVPA’s  legislative  history.    566  U. S.,  at 
453,  458–460.    The  Court  instead  read  that  history  to
demonstrate  that  Congress  acted  to  exclude  all  corporate 
entities, not just the sovereign ones.  Id., at 459–460 (cit-
ing  Hearing  and  Markup  on  H. R.  1417  before  the  House
Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs  and  Its  Subcommittee  on
Human  Rights  and  International  Organizations,  100th 
Cong., 2d Sess., 87–88 (1988)); see also 566 U. S., at 461–
462 (BREYER, J., concurring).  Second, even for international-
law  norms  that  do  not  require  state  action,  plaintiffs
can  still  use  corporations  as  surrogate  defendants  to 
challenge  the  conduct  of  foreign  governments.    In  Kiobel, 
for  example,  the  plaintiffs  sought  to  hold  a  corporate
defendant  liable  for  “aiding  and  abetting  the  Nigerian 
Government  in  committing,”  among  other  things,  “crimes
against humanity.”  569 U. S., at 114; see also, e.g., Sarei 
v. Rio Tinto, PLC, 671 F. 3d 736, 761–763 (CA9 2011) (en 
banc)  (corporate  defendant  allegedly  used  Papua  New