About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

1 1 (July 22, 2021)

handle is hein.crs/govedzq0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional ______ a Research Service ~nformrng the egislative debate since 1914___________________ Privacy Law and Private Rights of Action: Standing After Trans Union v. Ramirez July 22, 2021 Data privacy continues to be an important issue for legislators at both the state and federal levels, and a frequent consideration for privacy legislation is whether consumers will be able to sue those who violate their privacy rights. The availability of federal courts to hear litigation implicates the constitutional doctrine of standing: the notion that a federal court may only hear a claim that alleges a case or controversy between the plaintiff and the defendant. In the Supreme Court's recent decision in Trans Union, LLC v. Ramirez, the Court addressed whether a class of more than 8,000 plaintiffs alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) had standing given that many of the plaintiffs alleged no harm other than the FCRA violations themselves. The Court's analysis in Trans Union and the outcome of the case-in which the Court determined that only 1,853 class members had standing to sue-may be a blueprint for federal courts addressing questions of standing in future claims involving privacy rights or other statutory violations. This Legal Sidebar briefly outlines the doctrine of standing before turning to a discussion of the Supreme Court's opinion in Trans Union. The Sidebar concludes with considerations for federal privacy legislation in light of Trans Union. Constitutional Standing Standing has its roots in Article III of the Constitution, which sets forth the powers of the federal judiciary and limits that power to resolving Cases and Controversies. Constitutional standing is thus often called Article III standing. In some circumstances, federal courts also address non-constitutional (or prudential) issues of standing. While Congress may abrogate prudential standing through legislation, it has no power to alter the standards for Article III standing. A general principle of Article III standing is that a plaintiff must have a personal stake in the outcome of a given case. Courts evaluate a plaintiff's Article III standing by assessing three factors: the plaintiff must have (1) an actual or imminent concrete and particularized injury (2) that was likely caused by the defendant and (3) may likely be redressed through judicial relief. In many cases, standing will turn on whether the plaintiff's alleged injury is sufficiently concrete to satisfy the first factor. The Supreme Court has held that an injury must actually exist to be considered concrete. In Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, the Court held that a bare procedural violation would not qualify as a concrete harm, but elaborated that an intangible harm may satisfy the concrete harm requirement if it has a close relationship to a harm that Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10629 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most