Federal Court Holds Email Addresses Are PII Under California Credit Card Act

Credit Cards Class Action Song-Beverly Credit Card Act Privacy/Cyber Risk & Data Security

On October 21, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California held that email addresses are personal identification information (PII) under California’s Song-Beverly Credit Card Act. Capp v. Nordstrom, Inc., No. 13-660-MCE-AC, 2013 WL 5739102 (E.D. Cal. Oct. 21, 2013). In this case, a customer sued a retailer on behalf of a putative class after the retailer sought the customer’s email address in connection with a credit card transaction to provide the customer with an electronic receipt. The customer alleged that the retailer subsequently used the email address to send unsolicited marketing materials. Following the California Supreme Court’s ruling in Pineda v. Williams Sonoma, in which the court held that a ZIP code is part of a person’s address and constitutes PII, the court here predicted that the state supreme court also would hold that an email address constitutes PII. Citing the statute’s broad terms and its overarching objective to protect the personal privacy of consumers who make purchases with credit cards, the district court held that the alleged conduct directly implicated the purposes of the statute. The district court also rejected the retailer’s argument that, if email addresses constitute PII, then the customer’s claim would be preempted by the CAN-SPAM Act, which regulates unsolicited commercial electronic mail, i.e. “spam.” The court held that the Song-Beverly Act claims were not subject to the CAN-SPAM Act’s express preemption clause because the Song-Beverly Act applies only to email addresses and does not regulate the content or transmission of email messages.