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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

9th Circuit: Plaintiffs’ face-scanning claims can proceed

Courts Ninth Circuit Appellate Privacy/Cyber Risk & Data Security Class Action Spokeo

Courts

On August 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed a district court order certifying a class action suit that alleged a social media company’s face-scanning practices violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The court found that the plaintiffs alleged a sufficiently concrete injury necessary to establish Article III standing as defined in the U.S. Supreme court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins. The plaintiffs contended that the defendant’s use of the facial-recognition technology did not comply with Illinois law designed to regulate “the collection, use, safeguarding and storage of biometrics”—which, under BIPA, includes the scanning of face geometry. The district court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing and certified the class. The defendant appealed, arguing, among other things, that even if the plaintiffs have standing to sue, (i) BIPA is not intended to be applied extraterritorially; (ii) the collection of biometric data occurred on servers located outside of Illinois; and (iii) it is unclear that the alleged privacy violations “occurred ‘primarily and substantially within’” within the state. Additionally, the defendant argued that the district court abused its discretion by certifying the class because the state’s “extraterritoriality doctrine precludes the district court from finding predominance,” and that a class action was not superior to individual actions due to the potential for a large statutory damages award.

On appeal, the 9th Circuit held that the plaintiffs’ claims met the standing requirement of Spokeo because the defendant’s alleged development of a face template that uses facial-recognition technology without users’ consent constituted an invasion of an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests. “Because we conclude that BIPA protects the plaintiffs’ concrete privacy interests and violations of the procedures in BIPA actually harm or pose a material risk of harm to those privacy interests, the plaintiffs have alleged a concrete and particularized harm, sufficient to confer Article III standing,” the appellate court stated. The 9th Circuit also dismissed the defendant’s extraterritoriality argument, stating that predominance is not defeated because the threshold questions of exactly which consumers BIPA applies to can be decided on a classwide basis.