The Qatar World Cup lawsuit against Jacobs is a set of three federal cases in Colorado brought by roughly 130 Filipino construction workers who say they were subjected to forced labor while building stadiums for the 2022 tournament, and who are suing Jacobs Engineering Group and its subsidiary CH2M Hill under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. After a June 2025 ruling by Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung and two March 2026 rulings by Judge Regina M. Rodriguez, the core forced labor claims have survived motions to dismiss and are heading toward discovery.
Who Is Suing and What They Say Happened
The plaintiffs are citizens of the Philippines who were recruited to work on World Cup stadium projects between 2012 and 2021, including the 974 Stadium, Al Thumama Stadium, Al Wakrah Stadium, Khalifa Stadium, Al Rayyan Stadium, and Lusail Stadium. The first case, F.C. v. Jacobs Solutions Inc., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in October 2023 on behalf of 38 workers.
According to the complaint, the workers were deceived about the terms of their employment before they arrived in Qatar. Once there, their employers confiscated their passports, which prevented them from changing jobs or leaving the country. They say they were forced to work in extreme heat for stretches as long as 72 hours without food or water, housed in cramped and unsanitary barracks, and either underpaid or not paid at all. Under Qatar’s kafala sponsorship system, migrant workers’ visas were tied to their employers, and workers who complained risked being reported for “absconding,” which could lead to arrest, fines, and deportation. Migrant workers were also legally barred from joining unions or striking.
Why Jacobs and CH2M Hill Are the Defendants
Jacobs and CH2M Hill did not employ the plaintiffs and did not build the stadiums. In 2012, Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy hired CH2M Hill as the Programme Management Consultant for the country’s World Cup construction program, a multibillion-dollar effort covering nine new stadiums and upgrades to three existing ones. The Supreme Committee separately contracted with companies like Al Jaber Engineering and Midmac Company to carry out the actual construction. CH2M’s job was to oversee those contractors: monitoring site safety, ensuring labor standards were followed, and recommending corrective actions when problems in the labor supply chain arose.
In 2017, Jacobs Engineering acquired CH2M Hill and took over its World Cup responsibilities. Jacobs Engineering is headquartered in Texas; CH2M Hill had deep roots in Colorado. Jacobs Solutions Inc. later acquired the stock of Jacobs Engineering, making it a wholly owned subsidiary. The court has noted that Jacobs Solutions was incorporated after the plaintiffs had already finished their work in Qatar, a fact that matters for jurisdiction.
The plaintiffs argue that CH2M Hill and Jacobs Engineering were not passive bystanders but managed, audited, and had authority over the labor supply chain and were contractually responsible for ensuring proper labor standards. The complaint alleges the companies knowingly benefited from the venture “to the tune of $50 million.”
The Legal Theory: Forced Labor Under the TVPRA
The workers sue under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a federal law that allows victims of forced labor and human trafficking to bring civil claims in U.S. courts. The TVPRA reaches not only direct traffickers but also anyone who “knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture” that the person “knew or should have known” involved trafficking or forced labor.
Because the conduct occurred in Qatar, the case turns on whether the TVPRA’s civil remedy applies extraterritorially. The statute contains an explicit extraterritorial jurisdiction provision at 18 U.S.C. § 1596, and after the Supreme Court narrowed the Alien Tort Statute in Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe (2021), the TVPRA has become one of the few remaining avenues for civil claims against U.S. corporations over overseas labor abuses. Courts have often dismissed TVPRA supply-chain claims by reading “participation in a venture” and the knowledge requirement narrowly, so the extraterritoriality and pleading questions are the heart of the litigation.
What the Court Has Decided So Far
On June 26, 2025, Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung issued a 46-page opinion that largely denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in the original F.C. case. Judge Chung held that the TVPRA’s civil remedy applies extraterritorially, adopting the reasoning of the Fourth Circuit’s 2019 decision in Roe v. Howard, which affirmed a $3 million jury verdict for trafficking that occurred in Yemen. He also found the plaintiffs had standing, relying on the D.C. Circuit’s 2024 decision in Doe v. Apple Inc., which treated TVPRA “participation in a venture” liability as analogous to aiding and abetting. Unlike the Apple plaintiffs, whose claims were dismissed for failing to link defendants to the specific suppliers that exploited them, the Jacobs plaintiffs identified the specific construction venture, the specific stadiums where they worked, and the specific oversight role the defendants played.
Judge Chung found the workers had “plausibly alleged” that CH2M Hill and Jacobs Engineering participated in the venture by providing “customized” and “unique” management services, and that the companies knew of or recklessly disregarded the labor abuses given their contractual duty to monitor safety and the extensive public reporting on exploitation within Qatar’s labor system.
Not everything survived. Judge Chung dismissed human trafficking claims under 18 U.S.C. § 1590, finding that the statute’s extraterritorial reach requires the alleged offender to be a U.S. national or resident, and the direct employers were Qatari companies. He dismissed claims against Jacobs Solutions Inc. and CH2M Hill International B.V. for lack of personal jurisdiction, finding those entities lacked sufficient ties to Colorado. He dismissed state-law claims for negligence and unjust enrichment. And he rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the TVPRA should apply simply because the defendants felt financial benefits in the United States, calling that theory one that “elevates hope over reason.”
In March 2026, Judge Regina M. Rodriguez, who presides over all three cases, issued two more rulings. On March 20, she denied Jacobs’ request for an interlocutory appeal, refusing to let the company immediately challenge the finding that the TVPRA’s private right of action applies extraterritorially. That denial effectively locked in the extraterritoriality ruling across the cases. On March 30, she ruled on the motion to dismiss in the second case. She again dismissed Jacobs Solutions Inc. and CH2M Hill International B.V. for lack of personal jurisdiction and again dismissed the § 1590 trafficking claims. She also dismissed the claims of 19 of the 40 plaintiffs in that case, those who had worked for a contractor called Habtoor Leighton Group, because the complaint failed to plausibly connect that employer to the World Cup construction venture overseen by the defendants. The remaining plaintiffs’ forced labor claims against Jacobs Engineering, CH2M Hill Companies, and CH2M Hill International proceeded.
The Three Related Cases
The original F.C. lawsuit has grown into three related cases in the same court, all assigned to Judge Rodriguez and Magistrate Judge Chung:
- F.C. v. Jacobs Solutions Inc., filed October 2023 on behalf of 38 Filipino workers.
- C. et al v. Jacobs Solutions Inc. (No. 25-cv-00274), filed January 27, 2025, on behalf of 40 additional Filipino workers, referencing work at the Al Thumama, Al Wakrah, Khalifa, Al Rayyan, and Lusail stadiums.
- B. et al v. Jacobs Solutions Inc. (No. 25-cv-03067), filed September 30, 2025, with allegations the court has described as “nearly identical” to the first two. A motion to dismiss is pending.
The plaintiffs are represented by Sparacino PLLC and Global Rights PLLC, both based in Washington, D.C., together with Colorado firm Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff and Murray. Counsel describe the group as “nearly 100 Filipino workers” across the cases, with the total plaintiff count reaching roughly 130.
The Shareholder Derivative Suit
The worker litigation has produced corporate governance fallout as well. In a separate action unsealed in May 2024, a pension fund filed a shareholder derivative lawsuit against Jacobs Solutions’ board of directors in the Delaware Court of Chancery, docketed as No. 2024-0431. The suit alleges that board members ignored their duty to monitor worker safety and human rights despite having “ample notice” of the exploitative labor conditions in Qatar’s migrant worker system. Details on its current status remain limited.
Jacobs’ Response and Current Status
When the first suit was filed in October 2023, Jacobs Solutions said it had not yet been served or reviewed the allegations but stated it was “committed to respecting the human rights of all those in its operations.” The company has since fought the cases through motions to dismiss, jurisdictional challenges, and the unsuccessful request for interlocutory appeal.
Judge Chung’s ruling noted that whether the defendants’ direct employers “kept the defendants in the dark” about forced labor practices is a factual question that will be “explored further as the lawsuit unfolds.” As of mid-2026, none of the three cases have settled, and no trial dates have been set. The original F.C. case remains open and active, with its last docket entry in June 2026. The second case is proceeding with a reduced plaintiff group after the March 2026 ruling, and the third has a pending motion to dismiss. Discovery is expected to focus on what the defendants knew about labor conditions at the stadiums they were paid to oversee.