Jeffrey Laydon, Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated v. Cooperatieve Rabobank U.A., et al.

This Court has “repeatedly and explicitly held” that to decide whether a case involves a domestic application of a statute—as opposed to an impermissibly extraterritorial one—“courts must identify the statute’s focus and ask whether the conduct relevant to that focus occurred in United States territory.” Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronit Intn’l, Inc., No. 21-1043, slip op. at 4 (June 29, 2023) (cleaned up). “If the conduct relevant to the statute’s focus occurred in the United States, then the case involves a permissible domestic application of the statute, even if other conduct occurred abroad.” Id. at 5 (cleaned up). The Second Circuit has read this precedent to establish a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for domestic application of a law. In applying federal securities and commodities laws, the Circuit has held that even if the conduct relevant to the statute’s focus occurred in the U.S., a claim may still be extraterritorial if other conduct occurred abroad and a court decides that, all things considered, the claim is “predominantly foreign.” Other circuits read this Court’s focus test as establishing a necessary and sufficient condition for a domestic application. And the First and Ninth Circuit—along with the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Solicitor General—have rejected the “predominantly foreign” test in particular as inconsistent with this Court’s precedents. The question presented is: Whether, to decide if a claim involves a domestic application of a statute, courts may consider factors other than whether the conduct relevant to the statute’s focus occurred in the United States.