The New York Times - USA (2020-12-02)

A20 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALWEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2020

WASHINGTON — The Su-

preme Court, which has placed

strict limits on lawsuits brought in

federal court based on human

rights abuses abroad, seemed

poised on Tuesday to reject a suit

accusing two American corpora-

tions of complicity in child slavery

on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.

The case was brought by six cit-

izens of Mali who said they were

trafficked into child slavery as

children. They sued Nestlé USA

and Cargill, saying the firms had

aided and profited from the prac-

tice of forced child labor.

“Plaintiffs are former child

slaves seeking compensation

from two U.S. corporations which

maintain a system of child slavery

and forced labor in their Ivory

Coast supply chain as a matter of

corporate policy to gain a compet-

itive advantage in the U.S. mar-

ket,” said Paul L. Hoffman, a law-

yer for the plaintiffs.

Neal K. Katyal, a lawyer for the

companies, said they “abhor child

slavery” and were not involved in

it.

“The claim plaintiffs bring al-

leges something horrific: that lo-

caters in Mali sold them as chil-

dren to an Ivorian farm where

overseers forced them to work,”

Mr. Katyal said. But, he added,

“the defendants are not the locat-

ers, not the overseers and not the

farm.”

The plaintiffs sued under the

Alien Tort Statute, a cryptic 1789

law that allows federal district

courts to hear “any civil action by

an alien for a tort only, committed

in violation of the law of nations or

a treaty of the United States.”

The law was largely ignored un-

til the 1980s, when federal courts

started to apply it in international

human rights cases. A 2004 Su-

preme Court decision, Sosa v. Ál-

varez-Machain, left the door open

to some claims under the law, as

long as they involved violations of

international norms with “definite

content and acceptance among

civilized nations.”

Since then, the Supreme Court

has narrowed the law in two ways,

saying it does not apply where the

conduct in question was almost

entirely abroad or where the de-

fendant was a foreign corporation.

In 2013, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch

Petroleum, the court said there

was a general presumption

against the extraterritorial appli-

cation of American law. It rejected

a suit against a foreign corpora-

tion accused of aiding and abet-

ting atrocities by Nigerian mili-

tary and police forces against

Ogoni villagers.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts

Jr., writing for the majority, said

that even minimal contact with

the U.S. would not be sufficient to

overcome the presumption.

In 2018, in Jesner v. Arab Bank,

the court ruled in favor of a bank

based in Jordan accused of pro-

cessing financial transactions

through a branch in New York for

groups linked to terrorism. The

court said foreign corporations

may not be sued under the 1789

law, but it left open the question of

domestic corporations.

In Tuesday’s case, Nestlé USA

v. Doe, No. 19-416, the companies

sought to expand both sorts of lim-

itations. They said the 1789 law did

not allow suits even when some of

the defendants’ conduct was said

to have taken place in the U.S., and

they urged the court to bar suits

under the law against all corpora-

tions, foreign or domestic.

They seemed likely to succeed,

but on narrower grounds. Justices

across the ideological spectrum

questioned whether the plaintiffs’

lawsuit had sufficiently tied the

defendants to the abuses they said

they had suffered.

“When I read through your

complaint,” Justice Stephen G.

Breyer told Mr. Hoffman, “it

seemed to me that all or virtually

all of your complaint amount to

doing business with these people.

They help pay for the farm. And

that’s about it. And they know-

ingly do it.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said

even that overstated matters, as

the lawsuit said only that the com-

panies knew or should have

known of the practices.

“After 15 years, is it too much to

ask that you allege specifically

that the defendants involved, the

defendants who are before us

here, specifically knew that forced

child labor was being used on the

farms or farm cooperatives with

which they did business?” he

asked Mr. Hoffman. “Is that too

much to ask?”

Those questions suggested that

the court could rule for the compa-

nies without making a broad

statement about corporate immu-

nity. Indeed, Justice Alito said that

some of the companies’ broadest

arguments “lead to results that

are pretty hard to take.”

Suppose, he said, that a firm

“surreptitiously hires agents in

Africa to kidnap children and keep

them in bondage on a plantation

so that the corporation can buy co-

coa or coffee or some other agri-

cultural product at bargain

prices.”

“You would say,” Justice Alito

asked Mr. Katyal, “that the vic-

tims, who couldn’t possibly get

any recovery in the courts of the

country where they had been

held, should be thrown out of court

in the United States, where this

corporation is headquartered and

does business?”

Mr. Katyal said there were ways

to hold such a corporation ac-

countable. But he said the 1789 law

was not one of them.

Corporations Watch Case

On Human Rights Suits

By ADAM LIPTAK

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — By any-
body’s estimation, Yvette Gentry
inherited a mess.
It was Oct. 1 when Chief Gentry,
50, was sworn in as the interim
chief of the Louisville Metro Po-
lice Department. Trust between
police officers and the city’s Black
and Latino residents was more
frayed than it had been in dec-
ades.
Chief Gentry’s job, on its face,
was simply to serve as police chief
until the city could find someone
to fill the role permanently. But it
was commonly understood within
City Hall and the Police Depart-
ment — and among those who had
demonstrated outside for months
— that residents wanted more.
“The expectation is on me to
hold officers accountable,” she
said in a recent interview.
A series of scandals has en-
gulfed the Louisville police force
in recent years: In 2017, an inves-
tigation by the Kentucky Center
for Investigative Reporting found
that the department had secretly
been working with federal immi-
gration officers to deport undocu-
mented residents. In 2018, a teen-
ager was handcuffed and frisked
and had his car searched during a
25-minute traffic stop that re-
sulted in a viral video. In 2019, two
officers were sentenced for their
involvement in a sexual abuse
scandal that occurred when they
served on a youth mentorship pro-
gram; a third was recently in-
dicted.
“We want to live in a place
where we are not scared that
somebody is going to kill us or
take us to jail just because of how
we look,” said Karina Barillas, the
executive director of La Casita
Center, a group that advocates for
the city’s Latino residents.
There is a sense that fair treat-
ment is not a guarantee, Ms. Bari-
llas said. With frustration already
smoldering, the highly publicized
death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-
year-old Black woman who was
killed during a botched police raid
on her apartment in March, acted
like gasoline.
So the city turned to Chief Gen-
try, a decorated police officer who
led two Louisville nonprofit orga-

nizations after retiring as deputy

chief in 2015.

“She is uniquely situated, per-

haps more so than anybody in the

city of Louisville right now, to re-

ally be a vessel for reconciliation,”

said Jessica Green, a city council-

woman and chair of the council’s

Public Safety Committee.

Chief Gentry’s reputation pre-

cedes her in almost every crowd.

City Council members who dis-

agree with her on policy nonethe-

less speak highly of her honesty

and her loyalty to the city. Even

many activists who regularly pro-

test the police temper their criti-

cism when asked directly about

Chief Gentry.

But the divide between police

officers and many residents has

grown so wide that reconciliation

can seem like a dream. Protesters

want stronger accountability

measures for officers who break

the rules. Many City Council

members agree. Even some police

officers acknowledge that the de-

partment needs reform.

Still, Chief Gentry, who is Black,

has given residents some hope.

She speaks plainly about the de-

partment’s problems and those of

the city at large. During a recent

conference with business execu-

tives, she accused city leaders and

the business community of failing

to provide opportunities for Black

residents.

“Why would it take people com-

ing into some of the precious com-

munities that you have preserved

so well, busting out windows and

busting out doors, to get people’s

attention?” she asked, referring to

protests that sometimes led to

property destruction in the sum-

mer and fall.

“They can fire me tomorrow,

they can fire me the next day, I

don’t care,” she said. “I have no

fear in what I have to do.”

The city found itself needing an

interim chief after a restaurant

owner was shot and killed in June

as police officers and National

Guardsmen tried to disperse pro-

testers. The mayor fired the previ-

ous chief after learning that offi-

cers at the scene did not have their

body cameras turned on.

It is not entirely clear what

Chief Gentry will be able to ac-

complish during her remaining

time as interim chief — a period

that could last several more

months. She has said she is not in-

terested in the permanent ap-

pointment.

She started her short-term role

by tearing down plywood boards

that covered the windows of the

downtown police station to pro-

tect the building from racial jus-

tice demonstrators — a gesture

that the department would again

open its doors to the outside

world.

She met with some of the pro-

testers. And she set other goals:

educate the public on when, and

when not, to call the police; instill

in officers a mission to build rela-

tionships with the communities

they patrol; foster more diversity

within the police force; and secure

a major pay raise for starting offi-

cers.

She has made some progress,

but a fatal police shooting on Nov.

22 cast doubt on her ability to

usher in the transparency that

people were hoping for.

Body camera footage of the

shooting, which happened during

a traffic stop, was released on

Monday — more than a week after

it happened.

The Police Department had a

policy to release body camera

footage within 24 hours. But this

summer, facing backlash after Ms.

Taylor’s death, the department

handed over the investigation of

police shootings to the Kentucky

State Police. While the new policy

was meant to improve account-

ability, critics argued that it effec-

tively eroded transparency.

“Whoever had the brilliant idea

to entrust the public’s right to

know with K.S.P. was seriously

misinformed,” said Amye Bensen-

haver, a retired assistant attorney

general in Kentucky who special-

ized in open records cases.

Chief Gentry said she would

prefer that a regional task force of

law enforcement agencies handle

these cases. She added that while

some so-called reforms can seem

like a good idea, they often do not

mesh with reality.

“Everybody’s goal right now is

to get us better, to get past the pain

and heal our city,” she said, but

“I’m not going to be doing stuff

hastily to make people happy.”

Some demonstrators, she

noted, have called for a ban on the

use of chokeholds by the police.

But, she said, the restraint can

give officers an alternative to us-

ing their guns in life-threatening

situations.

“If somebody has one of my four

sons in a situation where they’re

not in their right mind, Lord help

them, please don’t shoot my son if

you can do something else,” she

said.

Chief Gentry began her career

in law enforcement as a dispatch

operator, answering 911 calls and

directing officers to emergencies.

By the late 1990s she was a sworn

Louisville police officer, assigned

to patrol the Park Hill housing

project.

In the summer of 1999, a heat

wave descended on the city, leav-

ing many Park Hill residents swel-

tering in apartments without air-

conditioning.

Seeing their need, Chief Gentry

raised enough money to buy doz-

ens of air-conditioning units.

Along with other officers, she in-

stalled them.

“Policing is a privileged oppor-

tunity to just really dig deep into

how you help people,” Chief Gen-

try said. “Very few people get the

privilege to actually peek behind

the curtains, so it’s what you do

with that information, you know,

what are you going to do with it

now that you see it?”

Over the next two decades,

Chief Gentry moved up the ranks,

becoming deputy chief in 2011 and

retiring from the force in January

2015.

Then, this summer, she was

asked to return. Some friends told

her not to. Her husband was skep-

tical as well, worrying for her

health — Chief Gentry was de-

clared free of breast cancer in

2016.

During her swearing-in cere-

mony, Mayor Greg Fischer de-

scribed the uneasiness in Lou-

isville as “a challenging time un-

like anything any of us have ever

seen.”

One night in October, at the sub-

urban home of the state’s attorney

general, Daniel Cameron, about

four dozen demonstrators gath-

ered to protest his office’s investi-

gation into Ms. Taylor’s death. Po-

lice officers were there too: They

formed a line and began to march,

urging the crowd to get off the

street. Reluctantly, the protesters

moved back, in a scene that has

become typical in 2020.

Asked about Chief Gentry’s

ability to improve conditions in

Louisville, the demonstrators ex-

pressed disagreement. Travis

Nagdy, 21, said he would wait and

see, though he was skeptical that

she could solve the problems that

led to the protests in the first

place. About a month later, on Nov.

23, Mr. Nagdy was shot and killed

in Louisville. The police have

made no arrests in the case.

Delaney Haley, who helped or-

ganize the protest at Mr. Camer-

on’s house, said she was happy to

see a Black woman at the helm but

doubted that she would bring the

systematic changes many resi-

dents wanted.

“We definitely want to be hope-

ful,” she said, “but we’ve seen

these chiefs come in and out and

not much change is made.”

Interim Louisville Chief With ‘No Fear’ Aims to Soothe a City With Plenty

Chief Yvette Gentry, a respected former deputy chief, came out of retirement to help heal the city.

XAVIER BURRELL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By WILL WRIGHT

It was an ignominious end to in-
terstellar dreams.
The enormous Arecibo radio
telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed
unexpectedly Tuesday morning,
the National Science Foundation
said, like a helpless spent giant in
a splash of metal and wire. Offi-
cials said a 900-ton platform of
girders and radio receivers sus-
pended from mountaintop towers
crashed into a 1,000-foot dish
nestled in a valley below.
The collapse came two weeks
after the National Science Foun-
dation said the telescope, a desti-
nation for astronomers perched in
the mountains of Puerto Rico, was
in danger of falling and would
have to be demolished.
“It’s such an undignified end,”
said Catherine Neish, an assistant
professor of earth sciences at the
University of Western Ontario.
“That’s what’s so sad about it.”
The platform collapsed at 7:
a.m. local time, the foundation
said. The cause was not immedi-
ately clear, but “initial findings in-
dicate that the top section of all
three of the 305-meter telescope’s
support towers broke off,” accord-
ing to the foundation.
As the platform fell, the tele-
scope’s support cables also
dropped, it said.
“We are saddened by this situa-
tion but thankful that no one was
hurt,” Sethuraman Pan-
chanathan, the foundation’s direc-
tor, said in a statement. “Our focus
is now on assessing the damage,
finding ways to restore operations
at other parts of the observatory,
and working to continue support-
ing the scientific community, and
the people of Puerto Rico.”
The foundation said on Nov. 19

that the telescope had to be torn

down after an auxiliary cable

slipped out of its socket and left a

100-foot gash in the dish below.

The observatory is managed by

the University of Central Florida.

On Nov. 24, it said engineers

had observed more breaks in the

wires of the remaining cables at-

tached to one of the towers that

held the platform.

The telescope became in-

grained in popular culture and

was featured in movies like “Con-

tact” and the James Bond film

“Goldeneye.”

But to scientists it was the most

powerful radar on the planet, ca-

pable of mapping asteroids and

planets from a distance and teas-

ing out the secrets of the iono-

sphere, a sheath of energetic par-

ticles in the upper atmosphere.

Lately it had been monitoring the

ticktock beeps of pulsars around

the galaxy, looking for the signs of

interference from gravitational

waves.

The observatory has also

served as the vanguard of the

search for alien civilizations, and

astronomers used it to track killer

asteroids.

For nearly six decades, the ob-

servatory was a renowned re-

source for radio astronomy and

planetary research, and it held

enormous cultural significance

for Puerto Ricans. Many said they

were inspired by the observatory

to pursue careers in science and

technology.

The telescope beamed signals

to and from space, an ability that

made it possible to collect undis-

covered details about planets in

the solar system, Dr. Neish said.

One of its early feats, in 1967,

was the discovery that the planet

Mercury rotates in 59 days, not 88

as astronomers had originally

thought.

“It was an incredible piece of

technology,” Dr. Neish said.

Telescope, Set to Be Dismantled, Collapses in Puerto Rico

By MARIA CRAMER

and DENNIS OVERBYE

On Tuesday, the receiver platform at the Arecibo Observatory crashed into its giant reflector dish.

RICARDO ARDUENGO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

FRONT PAGE

An article on Saturday about a
ruling by the U.S. Court of Ap-
peals for the Third Circuit that
rejected a request by President
Trump’s legal team to block Penn-
sylvania’s certification of its vote
misidentified the Chicago mayor
referenced by Rudolph W. Giuli-
ani. It was Richard J. Daley, who
served as mayor from 1955 to
1976, not Richard M. Daley, his
son, who served as mayor from
1989 to 2011.

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK
A picture caption with an article
on Nov. 24 about Canada’s at-
tempt to keep schools open dur-
ing a second lockdown misstated

Scarborough’s relationship with

Toronto. It is a section of Toronto.

It is not outside it.

Because of an editing error, an

article on Tuesday about the

decision in many European coun-

tries to keep schools open during

the pandemic referred impre-

cisely to the number of new co-

ronavirus cases in France in

November. The country as of Nov.

30 had seen a daily average of

more than 80 new cases per

100,000 people over the previous

seven days, not on average in

early November.

INTERNATIONAL

An article on Saturday about poor

security in the Demilitarized Zone

between North and South Korea

misstated the length of the DMZ.

It is about 155 miles long, not 255.

ARTS

An entry in the Listings pages on

Friday about classical concerts to

stream this month misstated the

Brooklyn venue that has

presented the trumpeter and

composer Nate Wooley’s “For/

With” series in recent years. It is

Issue Project Room, not Roulette.

An article on Monday about the

music in Steve McQueen’s “Small

Axe” anthology misstated the

first name of a musician. He is

Augustus Pablo, not August.

OBITUARIES

An obituary on Friday about the

actress Dena Dietrich misidenti-

fied the advertising agency that

created the Chiffon Margarine

commercials in which she por-

trayed Mother Nature. It was

Cunningham & Walsh, not D’Arcy

Masius Benton & Bowles.

An obituary on Oct. 8 about

Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., a grand-

son of John Tyler, the 10th presi-

dent of the United States, referred

incorrectly to President Tyler’s

role in the annexation of Texas.

While he supported it, and signed

a resolution agreeing that Texas

could become a state under cer-

tain conditions, he was not “the

president who annexed Texas.”

Texas was annexed during the

administration of Tyler’s succes-

sor, James K. Polk. This correc-

tion was delayed for research.

Errors are corrected during the press

run whenever possible, so some errors

noted here may not have appeared in

all editions.

Corrections

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