SCOTUS Shuts the Door on Certain Federal Claims With Two Landmark Rulings
Law360 published this article July 7, 2026.
Before any litigant can press a federal claim, it must clear a threshold issue that is easy to overlook. The statute it invokes must authorize a private lawsuit and the remedy sought. On June 23, the Supreme Court doubled down on a basic but critical point: each plaintiff must show that Congress authorized this plaintiff to sue this defendant under this statute for this form of relief.
This reaffirms a strong early defense for defendants and raises the risk for dismissal if plaintiffs can’t tie their federal claim to a clear statutory basis.
Federal courts have limited jurisdiction, and litigants often focus on whether they can establish subject-matter jurisdiction. But jurisdiction alone does not open the courthouse doors.
Even where a federal statute is implicated, and even where the alleged conduct is serious, courts will not permit a lawsuit to proceed unless the statute supplies the necessary right of action and available remedy.
Two Rulings Reshaped the Threshold for Federal Claims
In Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe, the Court addressed whether a jurisdictional statute permits courts to recognize a private right of action at all. The plaintiffs alleged that Cisco developed surveillance technology that allowed the Chinese government to identify and apprehend religious minority practitioners. They sought to hold Cisco and certain executives liable for aiding and abetting violations of international law under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).
Writing for the majority, Justice Barrett rejected that theory by distinguishing jurisdiction from a claim. The ATS grants federal courts jurisdiction over certain tort claims by aliens alleging violations of international law. But, as the Court emphasized, “the ATS ‘is a jurisdictional statute creating no new causes of action.’” (quoting Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U. S. 692, 713, 724 (2004)). Although Sosa left the door “cracked” for courts to recognize new ATS causes of action in narrow circumstances, Cisco closed it. The Court made it clear: “courts may not create new causes of action for violations of international norms.” The Court held that the authority to create new ATS causes of action, “always described as slight, is more accurately described as nonexistent.”
The holding rested on separation-of-powers principles. The Court explained that creating private rights of action is Congress’ role, not the judiciary’s. It “rejected the practice of fashioning rights of action as we see fit” because “[h]ome-grown causes of action are difficult to reconcile with the Constitution’s separation of legislative and judicial power.”
Those concerns, according to the Court, were especially strong in the ATS context, where claims often implicate foreign affairs. Congress has express constitutional authority to “define and punish” offenses against the law of nations.
Cisco provides a clear lesson for federal causes of action. A federal jurisdictional statute does not create a federal claim. Nor will courts expand a statute to include theories of liability Congress did not authorize. Even serious allegations of wrongdoing and important policy concerns cannot substitute for lacking statutory text creating a private right to sue.
In Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, the Court addressed a different but related question: whether a statute that contains an enforcement mechanism permits the particular remedy sought against the particular defendant sued. A Rastafarian inmate alleged that Louisiana prison officials forcibly shaved his head, in violation of his undisputed religious right. He sued individual prison officers in their personal capacities for damages under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA).
The Court did not decide whether RLUIPA ever authorizes money damages, opting instead to resolve the case on narrower grounds.
RLUIPA, as applied to state prison systems, rests on Congress’ constitutional Spending Clause authority. Spending Clause statutes operate as “conditions” attached to federal funds. Congress may offer money to states or state agencies, and recipients may accept that money subject to federal conditions.
But because the Spending Clause gave Congress power to spend, not a general power to regulate conduct, the Court treated RLUIPA’s enforcement mechanism as depending on consent. That distinction mattered in Landor because the defendants were individual employees sued personally for damages — not the Louisiana agency itself, the funding recipient.
The central question, therefore, to the Landor Court was whether individual state employees who did not consent to Congress’ RLUIPA “conditions” for federal funding may be held personally liable for damages under a Spending Clause statute. The Court held they may not. Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion explained that additional sanctions, including damages liability, require the “voluntary and knowing” consent of the party who must bear liability.
Louisiana’s Department of Corrections may have accepted RLUIPA conditions by receiving federal funds. But Landor sued only individual employees in their personal capacities, and he did not allege that those officers personally entered any agreement with the federal government or voluntarily and knowingly consented to damages liability under RLUIPA. “To know that is enough,” the Court wrote.
Because the officers never agreed to answer suits like Landor’s, the claim could not proceed against them “any more than a breach of contract action might proceed against a defendant who never formed a contract.”
Landor reinforces that a plaintiff must show that the underlying statute authorizes the suit as pled against the particular defendants. It was not enough that RLUIPA contains an express enforcement provision allowing an injured party to assert a violation and seek “appropriate relief.” Plaintiffs must identify a statutory right and enforcement mechanism, as well as the proper defendant and an available remedy.
Congress Holds the Key to the Federal Courthouse
Taken together, Cisco and Landor underscore that statutory authorization is not a technical afterthought. Before reaching the merits, litigants must show that Congress opened the federal courthouse doors for this claim, against this defendant, and for this remedy.
Contact Patrick Judd or any member of the Phelps appellate or litigation teams with questions.
