Buying cobalt doesn't make US firms liable for abuses in DR Congo, court rules. //

Apple and other major tech companies don't have to compensate victims of forced child labor that provided cobalt for the lithium-ion batteries used in many electronic devices, a US appeals court ruled. The lawsuit filed by former miners from the Democratic Republic of the Congo alleged that Apple, Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla violated a trafficking law that makes it illegal to participate in a "venture" that engages in forced labor.

"The plaintiffs allege the technology companies participated in a venture with their cobalt suppliers by purchasing the metal through the global supply chain," the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit noted in its ruling issued yesterday.

A US District Court previously dismissed the lawsuit, and a panel of three appeals court judges unanimously affirmed the dismissal yesterday. "Purchasing an unspecified amount of cobalt through the global supply chain is not 'participation in a venture' within the meaning of the TVPRA [Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008]," the ruling said. "We therefore affirm the district court's dismissal of the complaint." //

The plaintiffs' argument was a little more nuanced that, arguing not that buying cobalt in and of itself is the problem, but that these tech firms are demanding so much cobalt and at such cutthroat prices that they're inducing the mining companies into employing children to meet demand and margins because that's the only way they can satisfy the demand at the prices paid.

Legally it's still probably the "correct" outcome, but morally it's pretty hard not to find some fault with these incredibly profitable tech companies pretty knowingly using their market muscle to drive these sorts of atrocities. They could do better if they wanted to.