Thomas Robins v. Spokeo, Inc., 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 15211

Background

Spokeo operates a website that compiles and publishes consumer information and profiles; Thomas Robins discovered a Spokeo report about him he alleges contained multiple inaccuracies (age, marital status, education, profession, wealth, and a wrong photo).
Robins sued Spokeo for willful violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), principally 15 U.S.C. § 1681e(b) (requirement to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy).
The district court dismissed for lack of Article III standing, finding Robins hadn’t alleged an injury-in-fact beyond a statutory violation.
The Ninth Circuit (Spokeo I) reversed, but the Supreme Court vacated and remanded, directing the Ninth Circuit to consider whether Robins alleged a sufficiently concrete (not just particularized) injury under Article III (Spokeo II).
On remand the Ninth Circuit held FCRA protects a concrete interest in accurate consumer reports and that the particular inaccuracies alleged here are the sort that present a material risk of real harm, so Robins adequately alleged a concrete injury.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether a bare statutory violation of FCRA can satisfy Article III's concreteness requirement	Robins: Congress enacted FCRA to protect a concrete interest in accurate reporting, so a willful §1681e(b) violation alone suffices	Spokeo: Congress’s statutory cause of action does not automatically create Article III standing; many procedural violations are abstract and harmless	Held: Not every statutory violation suffices, but Congress may elevate intangible harms; FCRA protects a concrete interest in accuracy, so some procedural violations can establish concreteness
Whether the specific inaccuracies Robins alleges create a concrete injury or only a de minimis risk	Robins: Alleged misstatements (marital status, age, education, profession, wealth, wrong photo) were published and harmed or presented a real risk to employment prospects and caused emotional distress	Spokeo: The asserted harms are speculative and not ‘‘certainly impending’’; some inaccuracies (e.g., zip code) are harmless	Held: The alleged inaccuracies are materially more likely to harm Robins’ concrete interests than trivial errors; they present a material risk of real harm and thus suffice for concreteness

Key Cases Cited

Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016) (Supreme Court: statutory violations do not automatically satisfy Article III; concreteness required)
Robins v. Spokeo, Inc., 742 F.3d 409 (9th Cir. 2014) (Ninth Circuit initial standing decision reversing dismissal)
Guimond v. Trans Union Credit Info. Co., 45 F.3d 1329 (9th Cir. 1995) (FCRA protects consumers from transmission of inaccurate information)
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992) (Congress may identify intangible harms that satisfy Article III)
Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013) (standing requires threatened injury to be certainly impending; distinguishes speculative harms)
Safeco Ins. Co. of Am. v. Burr, 551 U.S. 47 (2007) (FCRA’s aims: fair and accurate credit reporting and consumer privacy)
Strubel v. Comenity Bank, 842 F.3d 181 (2d Cir. 2016) (procedural statutory violations can be concrete where they protect a concrete interest and present a risk of real harm)
In re Horizon Healthcare Servs. Inc. Data Breach Litig., 846 F.3d 625 (3d Cir. 2017) (unauthorized disclosure under privacy statutes can be a concrete harm)
Van Patten v. Vertical Fitness Grp., LLC, 847 F.3d 1037 (9th Cir. 2017) (standing where statutory violations presented the precise harms Congress sought to prevent)
Dreher v. Experian Info. Sols., Inc., 856 F.3d 337 (4th Cir. 2017) (FCRA violations that undermine fairness or accuracy can be concrete)
Lyshe v. Levy, 854 F.3d 855 (6th Cir. 2017) (Spokeo allows bare procedural violations to create concrete harm where designed to prevent the harm)