Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Forced child laborers from Mali cannot pursue class claims against cocoa importers, (Jul 23, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

“The Plaintiffs in this case deserve the greatest sympathy, and the people who took away their childhoods deserve the greatest condemnation. But the Plaintiffs did not plausibly allege a connection between those people and the Importers.”

A group of eight Malian citizens who alleged they were forced, as children, to work on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire, and who sued seven cocoa importers on behalf of a putative class for violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), appealed dismissal of their suit by a federal district court. The D.C. Circuit affirmed that dismissal, explaining that the formerly enslaved Malians lacked standing to sue these defendants because they could not plausibly allege a connection between the people who enslaved them and the importers in question.

Promised jobs, forced to labor. The former French colony where they were forced to work has upwards of 800,000 children working on the cocoa farms there. Each of the eight plaintiffs told a similar story—they were trafficked from Mali to Côte d’Ivoire as children and though promised well-paying jobs, were instead forced to work on small farms in the remote region. Eventually, each plaintiff made it home.

Named several cocoa importers. They later filed a putative class action in a U.S. federal district court against seven cocoa importers—including Cargill, Nestlé, Mondelēz, Hershey, Olam, Barry Callebaut, and Mars—accusing those cocoa importers of violating the TVPRA, which provides a civil remedy against any person who “‘knowingly benefits... from participation in a venture’ that violates federal slavery and human trafficking laws.”

They alleged that the defendant importers were the “architects and defenders of the cocoa production system of Côte d’Ivoire” and that they formed, operate, and control a cocoa supply chain to provide themselves with cheap cocoa. (“And to ‘delay... taking any effective action’ against child labor, the Importers allegedly ‘created and are the leaders of’ what the Plaintiffs characterize as a nice-sounding, do-nothing organization called the World Cocoa Foundation.”)

The district court granted the importers’ motion to dismiss, explaining that the formerly enslaved cocoa workers had not connected the importers to any specific plantations or to the ones upon which they had worked. The workers appealed.

Doe 1 v. Apple, Inc. Initially, the D.C. Circuit held the appeal in abeyance pending disposition of Doe 1 v. Apple, Inc., which was also before it. After the court held that the plaintiffs in the Apple case had standing, but failed to state a claim under the TVPRA, it turned back to the cocoa workers’ appeal, finding that their complaint “meaningfully differ[ed] from” the complaint in the Apple case.

Here, the causal connection between the undisputed injury (their forced labor) and the allegedly unlawful conduct (the importers’ alleged participation in a “supply chain venture”) was missing from the complaint. The “complaint against the Importers (1) does not identify all the farms where the Plaintiffs worked, (2) does not fully identify the farmers who owned and controlled those farms, and (3) does not plausibly allege that those (largely unidentified) farmers supplied cocoa to any of the Importers (or any clearly identified intermediaries).” Instead, their allegations were conclusory, so “thin” as to “hardly amount to “factual support” at all.”

“The Plaintiffs in this case deserve the greatest sympathy,” explained the court, “and the people who took away their childhoods deserve the greatest condemnation. But the Plaintiffs did not plausibly allege a connection between those people and the Importers. The Plaintiffs therefore lack standing to sue the Importers.”

The case is No. 22-7104.

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