Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On June 25, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez held in a 5-4 decision that certain members of a class action lawsuit, whose inaccurate credit reports were not provided to third parties, did not suffer a “concrete” injury sufficient to confer Article III standing. This case builds upon the Court’s 2016 decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, where the Court first addressed the concrete injury that must be suffered in order to have standing to bring suit under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). Importantly, while Spokeo’s holding that a bare procedural violation is insufficient to demonstrate a “concrete and particularized” injury still stands, the Court in TransUnion clarified that (1) a concrete injury is a “physical, monetary, or cognizable intangible harm traditionally recognized” as providing grounds for relief; and (2) that the “material risk of harm” alone is not a concrete injury unless that risk of harm materializes into an actual harm or a plaintiff is independently harmed by the material risk itself.

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