A federal judge declined to authorize an immediate appeal last week of a prior decision allowing companies operating out of Colorado to be sued for allegedly participating in a human trafficking venture involving Filipino laborers who constructed facilities for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Occasionally, trial judges’ decisions are subject to mid-case, or “interlocutory,” appeal. Federal law allows judges to authorize an interlocutory appeal if there is a crucial legal issue that could end the litigation, so long as there is “a substantial ground for difference of opinion” among judges.

In a March 20 order, U.S. District Court Judge Regina M. Rodriguez determined there was no substantial likelihood that judges would disagree about whether the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act can impose liability for the defendant companies for alleged overseas trafficking.

“Defendants do not directly contest the assertion that the majority of the courts that have addressed this issue have found that the TPVA’s civil claims apply extraterritorially,” she wrote.

Fifty-three plaintiffs sued CH2M Hill Companies, Jacobs Engineering Group, and related organizations that worked with the Qatari government to construct multiple soccer stadiums and facilities in the lead-up to the World Cup. The Filipino workers alleged their employers took their passports, forced them to live in inhumane conditions, and did not pay them as promised.

The plaintiffs accused the defendant corporations of violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Among other things, the law allows lawsuits against those who knowingly benefit from their participation in a human trafficking “venture.”

Last June, U.S. Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung permitted some of the claims to proceed. He agreed with the plaintiffs that the law reached outside U.S. borders to a certain extent, as Congress wanted to address the enforcement challenges posed by transnational trafficking. Chung noted the complaint sufficiently alleged that certain entities of CH2M Hill and Jacobs benefitted from the stadium construction venture and would have been put on notice about potential human trafficking.

The defendants then sought to immediately appeal his decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Specifically, they argued the lawsuit would be over if the 10th Circuit believed the federal human trafficking law did not apply to conduct outside U.S. borders.

“That different federal courts have reached irreconcilably different results on the exact same statutory interpretation question demonstrates substantial grounds for — and actual — differences of opinion,” wrote the defense attorneys.

The plaintiffs countered that multiple courts, including at least one federal appeals court, have agreed with Chung’s interpretation of the law. The main decisions on which the defendants relied were issued by a single trial judge in Washington, D.C.

While the defendants’ motion was pending, Colorado’s district court added Rodriguez to the case. Although the litigants previously consented to having a magistrate judge handle the lawsuit in its entirety, a similar case with 40 additional plaintiffs was also pending, with Rodriguez as the presiding judge. The court’s clerk told Colorado Politics that both cases were reassigned jointly to Rodriguez and Chung in mid-2025 for efficiency reasons.

Chung, responding to the request for an immediate appeal, recommended against it. He wrote that all circuit courts to address the issue have come to the same conclusion as him, and isolated decisions from trial judges to the contrary did not tip the scales.

“The short of it is that while there is some conflict in the district courts in the interpretation of the TVPRA, it falls short of substantial ground for difference of opinion,” he wrote.

The defendants objected to Rodriguez, arguing Chung did “not engage with the novel and difficult nature of the extraterritoriality question.”

To the contrary, responded Rodriguez, the fact that Chung “dedicated over ten pages of his 46-page (dismissal order) to the extraterritoriality issue demonstrates that he did engage with the novel and difficult nature of the extraterritoriality issue.”

She upheld Chung’s recommendation and observed that an interlocutory appeal would be “likely to prolong the matter, which has already been pending for two-and-a-half years.”

The case is F.C. et al. v. Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. et al.