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Motions to dismiss federal-court actions based on a lack of Article III standing are succeeding more frequently—thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez.  That ruling reaffirmed and clarified that every plaintiff must plausibly allege a “concrete injury” that is “‘real,’ and not ‘abstract,’” even when the plaintiff claims a violation of federal statutory rights.

This past June, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) issued TransUnion and Concrete Harm: One Year Later, a 68-page report that we authored for ILR. It explains the multiple arguments made available, or strengthened, by…

Continue Reading The Courts of Appeals’ Rigorous Application of TransUnion’s Standing Analysis Continues To Provide Defendants With Strong Arguments For Defeating Non-Injury Class Actions

Last Friday, the Supreme Court reversed the class-wide judgment in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (pdf), concluding that the lower courts had not properly applied the Court’s holding in Spokeo Inc. v. Robins and that the vast majority of the class members failed to satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement for Article III standing.  (Our firm, including the three of us, represented the petitioner in Spokeo, and we filed an amicus brief (pdf) in support of TransUnion.)

The Court’s holding has enormous practical significance for defendants facing class actions seeking statutory damages.  The Court reinforced Spokeo’s core holding that Congress’s creation…
Continue Reading Supreme Court adopts robust view of Article III standing limitations in TransUnion, reaffirming and fortifying Spokeo

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument (pdf) (audio) in TransUnion, LLC v. Ramirez, a Fair Credit Reporting Act case in which a federal court entered a class-wide judgment awarding statutory damages for two practices that TransUnion ended years ago.

The case boils down to two issues:

  1. Can “risk” of harm confer Article III standing on all members of a class when the challenged policy has ended and the risk never materialized for the overwhelming majority of the class?  And, if so, how much of a “risk” is needed?
  2. Can a class representative satisfy Rule 23(a)’s typicality

…
Continue Reading Supreme Court hears oral argument on class-member standing and typicality

Hundreds of lower courts have interpreted and applied the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins over the past ten months. We will provide a more comprehensive report on the post-Spokeo landscape in the near future, but the overarching takeaway is that the majority of federal courts of appeals have faithfully applied Spokeo’s core holdings that “Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation,” and that a plaintiff does not “automatically satisf[y] the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right.” Nonetheless, a handful of other decisions have been receptive to arguments by the plaintiffs’ bar that Spokeo did not make a difference in the law of standing, and that the bare allegation that a statutory right has been violated, without more, remains enough to open the federal courthouse doors to “no-injury” class actions.

Two recent decisions by the Seventh and Third Circuits illustrate these contrasting approaches.Continue Reading Two Recent Appellate Decisions Illustrate Divergent Approaches To Spokeo

330px-Supreme_Court_Front_Dusk-150x120.jpgA peculiar thing happened after the Supreme Court announced its decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (pdf) on Monday.

Even though the Court ruled in favor of Spokeo—vacating the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that the plaintiff had standing to sue and holding that the court of appeals had applied a legal standard too generous to plaintiffs—both sides declared victory. (Full disclosure: I argued on behalf of Spokeo in the Supreme Court.)

Spokeo tweeted:

Jay Edelson,

What’s going on?Continue Reading Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Try to Spin Spokeo

The Supreme Court today issued its decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (pdf), a closely-watched case presenting the question whether Article III’s “injury-in-fact” requirement for standing to sue in federal court may be satisfied by alleging a statutory violation without any accompanying real world injury.

The Court held that a plaintiff must allege “concrete” harm—which it described as harm that is “real”—to have standing to sue, and that the existence of a private right of action under a federal statute does not automatically suffice to meet the “real” harm standard. The decision is likely to have a meaningful impact on class action litigation based on alleged statutory violations. Justice Alito authored the opinion for the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, and Kagan. (We and our colleagues represented Spokeo before the Supreme Court.)Continue Reading Supreme Court Holds in Spokeo that Plaintiffs Must Show “Real” Harm to Have Standing to Sue for Statutory Damages

Under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, a plaintiff must allege that he or she has suffered an “injury-in-fact” to establish standing to sue in federal court. Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, No. 13-1339, to decide whether Congress may confer Article III standing by authorizing a private right of action based on a bare violation of a federal statute, even though the plaintiff has not suffered any concrete harm.

The Court’s resolution of this question in Spokeo could affect a number of different types of class actions that have been instituted in…
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins And Decide Whether Plaintiffs Who Have Suffered No Concrete Harm Nonetheless Have Article III Standing To Sue In Federal Court

Congress and state legislatures have enacted many statutes that provide for minimum statutory damages recoveries that are far in excess of the actual damages most individuals will suffer. A prominent example is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which offers $500 per violation of the statute, trebled to $1500 for willful violations. The idea is that offering such damages will create incentives for individual plaintiffs to pursue such claims in court when actual damages are minimal or difficult to measure. But the numbers can quickly add up when such statutory damages claims are aggregated as part of a putative class…
Continue Reading Is There New Hope for Challenging Aggregated Statutory Damages?

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear argument in United States v. Bormes, a case that apparently has not captured the attention of most class action practitioners. That’s understandable: The question presented (pdf) is “whether the Little Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(2), waives the sovereign immunity of the United States with respect to damages actions for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.” But the impetus for the federal government’s request for immunity—the enormous liability generated by aggregating statutory damages in a FCRA class action—is one that routinely affects businesses targeted by similar class actions. Businesses therefore should stay tuned to see what, if anything, the Court might say about the concerns that result from piling up large amounts of potential statutory damages in class actions.
Continue Reading Federal Government Acknowledges Undue Risk of Potentially Massive Liability from Class Actions for Statutory Damages Under the Federal Credit Reporting Act, but Proposes a Solution Good for One Defendant Only