SCOTUS Says Every Classmember Must Have Art. III Standing

In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, No. 20-297, 2021 U.S. LEXIS 3401, at *1-7 (June 25, 2021), the Supreme Court held that every classmember must meet Art. III Standing.  SCOTUS explained in the syllabus:

The Fair Credit Reporting Act regulates the consumer reporting agencies that compile and disseminate personal information about consumers. 15 U. S. C. §1681 et seq. The Act also creates a cause of action for consumers to sue and recover damages for certain violations. §1681n(a). TransUnion is a credit reporting agency that compiles personal and financial information about individual consumers to create consumer reports and then sells those reports for use by entities that request information about the creditworthiness of individual consumers. Beginning in 2002, TransUnion introduced an add-on product called OFAC Name Screen Alert. When a business opted into the Name Screen service, TransUnion would conduct its ordinary credit check of the consumer, and it would also use third-party software to compare the consumer’s name against a list maintained by the U. S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of terrorists, drug traffickers, and other serious criminals. If the consumer’s first and last name matched the first and last name of an individual on OFAC’s list, then TransUnion would place an [*2]  alert on the credit report indicating that the consumer’s name was a “potential match” to a name on the OFAC list. At that time, TransUnion did not compare any data other than first and last names.  A class of 8,185 individuals with OFAC alerts in their credit files sued TransUnion under the Fair Credit Reporting Act for failing to use reasonable procedures to ensure the accuracy of their credit files. The plaintiffs also complained about formatting defects in certain mailings sent to them by TransUnion. The parties stipulated prior to trial that only 1,853 class members (including the named plaintiff Sergio Ramirez) had their misleading credit reports containing OFAC alerts provided to third parties during the 7-month period specified in the class definition. The internal credit files of the other 6,332 class members were not provided to third parties during the relevant time period. The District Court ruled that all class members had Article III standing on each of the three statutory claims. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs and awarded each class member statutory damages and punitive damages. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed in relevant part.  Held: Only plaintiffs concretely harmed by a defendant’s statutory violation have Article III standing to seek damages against that private defendant in federal court. Pp. 6-27.  (a) Article III confines the federal judicial power to the resolution of “Cases” and “Controversies” in which a plaintiff has a “personal stake.” Raines v. Byrd, 521 U. S. 811, 819-820, 117 S. Ct. 2312, 138 L. Ed. 2d 849. To have Article III standing to sue in federal court, a plaintiff must show, among other things, that the plaintiff suffered concrete injury in fact. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560-561, 112 S. Ct. 2130, 119 L. Ed. 2d 351. Central to assessing concreteness is whether the asserted harm has a “close relationship” to a harm “traditionally” recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American courts. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330, 340, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 194 L. Ed. 2d 635. That inquiry asks whether plaintiffs have identified a close historical or common-law analogue for their asserted injury. Physical or monetary harms readily qualify as concrete injuries under Article III, and various intangible harms—like reputational harms—can also be concrete. Ibid.  “Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation.” Ibid. The Court has rejected the proposition that “a plaintiff automatically satisfies 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.” Id., at 341. An [*4]  injury in law is not an injury in fact. Pp. 6-14.  (b) The Court applies the fundamental standing requirement of concrete harm to this case. Pp. 15-27.  (1) In their reasonable-procedures claim, all 8,185 class members maintain that TransUnion did not do enough to ensure that misleading OFAC alerts labeling them as potential terrorists were not included in their credit files. See §1681e(b). TransUnion provided third parties with credit reports containing OFAC alerts for 1,853 class members (including the named plaintiff Ramirez). Those 1,853 class members therefore suffered a harm with a “close relationship” to the harm associated with the tort of defamation. Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 194 L. Ed. 2d 635. Under longstanding American law, a person is injured when a defamatory statement “that would subject him to hatred, contempt, or ridicule” is published to a third party. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U. S. 1, 13, 110 S. Ct. 2695, 111 L. Ed. 2d 1. The Court has no trouble concluding that the 1,853 class members suffered a concrete harm that qualifies as an injury in fact.  The credit files of the remaining 6,332 class members also contained misleading OFAC alerts, but the parties stipulated that TransUnion did not provide those plaintiffs’ credit information to any potential creditors during the designated class period.   The mere existence of inaccurate information, absent dissemination, traditionally has not provided the basis for a lawsuit in American courts. The plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that the misleading information in the internal credit files itself constitutes a concrete harm.   The plaintiffs advance a separate argument based on their exposure to the risk that the misleading information would be disseminated in the future to third parties. The Court has recognized that material risk of future harm can satisfy the concrete-harm requirement in the context of a claim for injunctive relief to prevent the harm from occurring, at least so long as the risk of harm is sufficiently imminent and substantial. See Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341-342, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 194 L. Ed. 2d 635 (citing Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. 398, 133 S. Ct. 1138, 185 L. Ed. 2d 264). But TransUnion advances a persuasive argument that the mere risk of future harm, without more, cannot qualify as a concrete harm in a suit for damages. The 6,332 plaintiffs did not demonstrate that the risk of future harm materialized. Nor did those plaintiffs present evidence that the class members were independently harmed by their exposure to the risk itself. The risk of future harm cannot supply the basis for their standing. Pp. 16-24.  (2) In two other claims, all 8,185 class members complained about formatting defects in certain mailings sent to them by TransUnion. But the plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the format of TransUnion’s mailings caused them a harm with a close relationship to a harm traditionally recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American courts. See Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 194 L. Ed. 2d 635.  The plaintiffs argue that TransUnion’s formatting violations created a risk of future harm, because consumers who received the information in the dual-mailing format were at risk of not learning about the OFAC alert in their credit files and thus not asking for corrections. The risk of future harm on its own is not enough to support Article III standing for their damages claim. In any event, the plaintiffs here made no effort to explain how the formatting error prevented them asking for corrections to prevent future harm.  The United States as amicus curiae asserts that the plaintiffs suffered a concrete “informational injury” from TransUnion’s formatting violations. See Federal Election Comm’n v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 118 S. Ct. 1777, 141 L. Ed. 2d 10; Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U. S. 440, 109 S. Ct. 2558, 105 L. Ed. 2d 377. But the plaintiffs here did not allege that they failed to receive any required information. They argued only that they received the information in the wrong format. Moreover, an asserted informational injury that causes no adverse effects does not satisfy Article III. Pp. 24-27.