Court decision · 25 June 2021
TransUnion LLC v Ramirez
594 U.S. 413 (2021) · Supreme Court of the United States
What it means for your code
Whether bad data left your systems is the line between a nuisance and a federal class action. Log egress, not just storage.
What happened
A credit agency wrongly flagged thousands of people as potential terrorists in its internal records. Only some of those records were ever sent to a third party.
What was decided
A statutory violation alone does not create standing in federal court. Class members whose inaccurate records were disclosed to a third party suffered concrete harm; those whose records merely sat in a database did not.
The legal test applied
- Article III standing requires concrete harm; a bare statutory violation is not enough
- Dissemination of inaccurate information to a third party is analogous to defamation and is concrete
- Every class member must have standing for every form of relief sought
What would have changed the outcome
- State courts and statutory schemes with liquidated damages are not bound by Article III
Source: Supreme Court of the United States, supremecourt.gov. Summary and analysis by Lawpatch. Risk analysis, not legal advice; the law may have moved on since this decision.