This Tech Litigation Roundup gathers and briefly analyzes notable lawsuits and court decisions across a variety of tech-and-law issues.
Each roundup in 2026 will dive deep into a major development with expert analysis from TJL legal fellow, Maddy Batt. This month’s focus is the Supreme Court’s recent decision on Doe v. Cisco, which closed off two key legal pathways victims use to hold tech companies accountable for human rights abuses.
Here is an excerpt:
This month, the US Supreme Court issued a decision in Doe v. Cisco that all but eliminated pathways for tech accountability under both the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). Both laws concern liability for human rights violations, so the Supreme Court’s decision restricts litigation over some of the most egregious allegations of abuse by US tech companies.
The lawsuit against Cisco claimed that the tech giant built bespoke products to help the Chinese government surveil and persecute a religious minority, the Falun Gong. According to the plaintiffs, Cisco designed an internet surveillance system called the “Golden Shield” and a facial recognition-equipped video surveillance system that enabled China to identify Falun Gong practitioners, arrest them, and subject them to torture during forced-conversion sessions. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor highlighted media reports that thousands of Falun Gong believers have been tortured to death.
As Justice Sotomayor recounts, plaintiffs allege that Cisco explicitly marketed its services as “useful to the ‘douzheng’ [crackdown] of Falun Gong” and characterized Falun Gong and its members as “viruses” and an “evil cult” in internal materials. In addition to helping China identify and track Falun Gong practitioners, Cisco’s surveillance systems allegedly provided information that Chinese officials used to threaten torture victims’ family members to coerce them into renouncing their beliefs.
Falun Gong adherents sued Cisco and two of its executives based on the ATS, alleging that they aided and abetted violations of international law by assisting in this campaign of persecution. One US citizen plaintiff also alleged that the executives aided and abetted his torture in violation of the TVPA.
Continue reading June’s Roundup on Tech Policy Press.
Roundup of other tech litigation developments:
- SCOTUS says Constitution protects cell phone location data: In another major decision this month, the US Supreme Court held in Chatrie v. United States that obtaining cell phone location data from tech companies counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment. As a result, police will generally need a warrant to legally acquire this data; the decision stopped short of determining that geofence warrants are always constitutionally insufficient. The decision recognizes a reasonable expectation of privacy in information shared with a tech company under the Constitution, a significant step for the legal framework governing digital privacy.
- OpenAI faces investigation and lawsuit by state attorneys general: The Florida Attorney General sued OpenAI on June 1 for alleged legal violations related to AI safety. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit raises some claims familiar from private lawsuits brought by TJL and others––such as violations of an unfair trade practices statute, negligence, and strict product liability claims––and a novel claim of public nuisance, which is currently being tested in the social media context in New Mexico. Weeks later, OpenAI was served a subpoena as part of an investigation by a coalition of state attorneys general.
- After Mythos/Fable takedown, lawsuit challenges US power to restrict model access: A legal tech firm that relies on Anthropic’s LLMs for its own products sued the United States, arguing that its order requiring Anthropic to restrict foreign nationals’ access to the company’s most advanced AI models was unlawful and exceeded export control authority.
- Data centers in US courts: Proponents and opponents of the data center boom both took their fight to the courts this month. The US followed through on its threat to intervene in the Clean Air Act case against xAI and is seeking to dismiss the entire suit, while cloud company Oracle sued the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin to challenge financial security requirements regulating hyperscale data center operators in the state. Meanwhile, residents of Oregon and Utah brought actions raising different legal theories that both challenge an alleged lack of public input in procedures to approve data center tax breaks in Hillsboro and construction in Box Elder County. In Mississippi, another lawsuit was filed challenging the gas turbines powering xAI’s data centers near Memphis. The proposed class action alleges private nuisance, public nuisance, negligence, and negligent infliction of emotional distress based on noise pollution from the turbines, taking a new approach from the environmental and procedural challenges currently predominating in data center litigation.
- International cases with major implications: The Delhi High Court upheld India’s authority to temporarily but entirely restrict access to the messaging app Telegram against a constitutional challenge, prompting concerns over impacts on freedom of expression. Separately, a German court ruled that Google can be liable for false statements in AI summaries appearing at the top of search results, because––unlike a traditional search engine––Google, not any third party, is responsible for generating the text.
- Litigation spotlights increasingly advanced scams: The FTC sued what it says is a network scam subscription app makers alleging they extensively use shell companies to dodge app store enforcement. Google sued Doe plaintiffs alleging they run a cybercrime operation that leverages Gemini to create fake websites for phishing. And a proposed class action in California alleges that AI company Kalibrate helps gas stations illegally collude to raise prices for consumers.
- Amazon sued over Ring’s Familiar Faces feature: Amazon faces a proposed class action lawsuit over an opt-in Ring feature that allegedly subjects every person captured on the doorbell camera to facial recognition AI and stores their biometric data. While some states have statutes explicitly regulating biometric privacy, this lawsuit relies on more widely available causes of action including deceptive trade practices, privacy torts, and unjust enrichment, and seeks to represent a nationwide class.
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