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Ninth Circuit: payday lenders not vicariously liable under TCPA for text messages
On January 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that three payday lenders and two marketing companies (together, the defendants) did not indirectly violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by accepting marketing help from a separate lead generator company that used a program to send text-messaged advertisements. In upholding the district court’s decision, the three judge panel concluded that “it is undisputed” that the defendants did not enter into a contract with the lead generator company, and further, that the lead generator company did not act as their agent or purported agent. The plaintiff-appellant that received the text-messaged advertisement—which directed consumers who clicked on the link within the message to a loan application website controlled by one of the defendants—filed a putative class action complaint, certified by the district court, against the defendants to allege that they were vicariously liable for sending the text messages in violation of the TCPA. Specifically, the plaintiff-appellant claimed the defendants ratified the lead generator company’s actions when they accepted leads even though they knew the leads were being generated through text messages. The district court granted summary judgments for all the defendants, and ruled they were not vicariously liable for the lead generator company’s actions, and that additionally, the plaintiff-appellant failed to present evidence that defendants had actual knowledge that the texts were being sent in violation of the TCPA. The appellate panel also noted that because one of the defendants—a contracted lead provider—had “no ‘knowledge of facts that would have led a reasonable person to investigate further,’ . . . [the defendant] cannot be deemed to have ratified [the] actions and therefore is not vicariously liable.”
Ninth Circuit Rules Banning Credit Card Surcharges Violates First Amendment
On January 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion affirming a district court decision that a California law banning credit card surcharges violated the First Amendment because it was an unconstitutional restriction of speech and unconstitutionally vague. California Civil Code Section 1748.1(a) prohibits retailers from imposing surcharges on customers who pay with credit cards, but allows businesses to offer discounts for cash or debit card payments. In 2014, plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the law, and the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs and permanently enjoined its enforcement, holding that the statute violated the First Amendment because it amounted to “a content-based restriction on commercial speech rather than an economic regulation.” The California Attorney General's Office appealed.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court decision, finding that California Civil Code Section 1748.1(a) could not withstand intermediate scrutiny because (i) the plaintiffs’ speech was not misleading, (ii) Section 1748.1(a) failed to promote California’s interest in protecting consumers from deception, and (iii) Section 1748.1(a) was more extensive than necessary to achieve California’s stated interest for the regulation. Though the panel affirmed the district court’s ruling, it also modified the district court’s injunction to apply only to the plaintiffs, and only with respect to the specific pricing practice they seek to employ.
See previous InfoBytes coverage here on court decisions regarding credit card surcharges
Ninth Circuit Denies Arbitration, Lacks Jurisdiction to Review Anti-SLAPP Motion
On December 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion affirming the district court’s decision to deny the defendants’ request to compel arbitration against plaintiffs who elected to participate in the defendants’ administration of California’s “Bad Check Diversion Program” (BCD Program). The order is the result of two consolidated appeals from separate district court orders related to a putative class action lawsuit claiming that the defendants violated the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and California Unfair Competition Law in their administration of the BCD Program. The BCD Program, administered by private entities in agreement with a local district attorney, provides consumers accused of writing bad checks the opportunity for deferred prosecution. Under the BCD Program, the defendants sent notices on official district attorney letterhead offering the plaintiffs the chance to avoid criminal prosecution under California’s bad check statute if they participated in the BCD Program and paid specified fees. The notices also included an arbitration clause. In the class action lawsuit, plaintiffs alleged that defendants violated the law by misleading plaintiffs into thinking law enforcement sent the letters and by allegedly including false threats in the letters that implied that failure to pay would result in arrest or imprisonment.
In response to the lawsuit, defendants filed a motion under California’s Anti-SLAPP law, which protects defendants from strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), to strike the plaintiffs’ state law claims as well as a motion to compel arbitration pursuant to the arbitration clause in the notices. With respect to the defendant’s motion to compel arbitration, the panel opined that the BCD Program is not subject to Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) provisions because it is “an agreement between a criminal suspect and the local authorities about how to resolve a potential state-law criminal violation” rather than a “private or commercial contract.” In response to the defendants’ Anti-SLAPP motion, the appellate panel concluded that it “lacked jurisdiction to review the district court’s denial of defendants’ Anti-SLAPP motion because, under the terms of the state statute, such a denial in a case deemed [by the lower court] to be filed in the public interest is not immediately appealable.”
The panel remanded to the district court for further proceedings.
CFPB Urges Supreme Court to Reject Tribal Lenders' Petition
On November 9, the CFPB filed a brief with the Supreme Court opposing the petition for a writ of certiorari submitted by online tribal lending entities. The lenders are challenging a January decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordered the entities to comply with a CFPB investigation (previously covered by Infobytes). The litigation stems from the issuance of a civil investigative demand (CID) by the CFPB to online lending entities owned by Native American tribes. The entities argue that due to tribal sovereignty, the CFPB does not have jurisdiction over the small-dollar lending services in question. The district court and the Ninth Circuit concluded that the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA) did not expressly exclude tribes from the CFPB’s enforcement authority and therefore, the entities cannot claim tribal sovereign immunity.
In its brief opposing the certiorari petition, the CFPB argues that the Ninth Circuit’s holding does not conflict with any prior Supreme Court or court of appeals decision, making further review unwarranted. The CFPB also argues, among other things, that Supreme Court review is unnecessary because “[t]he question at this juncture is solely whether the Bureau may obtain information from petitioners pursuant to a CID,” not “whether petitioners are subject to the Bureau’s regulatory authority.”
Ninth Circuit Claims California Licensing Law Violates Dormant Commerce Clause
On October 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed down an opinion concerning alleged violations of certain California statutes by an Ohio-based mortgage servicer (plaintiff). The panel held that the plaintiff is likely to prevail in its bid for a court order blocking the enforcement of the state’s financial code by certain California district attorneys because the law violates the Dormant Commerce Clause—a legal doctrine that prohibits states from unduly burdening interstate commerce. The defendants allege that the plaintiff violated Section 12200 of the California Financial Code, which requires a prorater—a person who is compensated for receiving monies from debtors and distributing the funds to creditors—to obtain a California prorater license and be incorporated in the state before conducting business on an interstate basis. The panel determined that “[t]his form of discrimination between in-state and out-of-state economic interests is incompatible with a functioning national economy, and the prospect of each corporation being required to create a subsidiary in each state is precisely . . . [what] the Dormant Commerce Clause exists to prevent.” Consequently, the panel vacated the district court’s order denying a preliminary injunction, and remanded for further proceedings.
The panel also affirmed the district court’s ruling that the plaintiff was required to disclose in its mail solicitations to homeowners that it “lacked authorization from lenders,” and opined that the plaintiff would most likely not prevail in its effort to challenge allegations that it violated sections of the California Business and Professions Code on a First Amendment basis. The First Amendment, the panel reasoned, “does not generally protect corporations from being required to tell prospective customers the truth.”
Finally, in a portion of the opinion in which one of the circuit judges dissented, the panel reversed a district court’s order dismissing both cases under Younger v. Harris “because the cases had proceeded beyond the ‘embryonic stage’ in the district court before the corresponding state cases were filed.” Judge Montgomery—who otherwise joined the opinion with respect to the Dormant Commerce Clause and First Amendment questions—argued that the district court's dismissal under Younger should have been upheld because “[b]oth cases arrived in federal court…as a preemptive strike by [the plaintiff] to enjoin state district attorneys from enforcing state statutes in state court.”
Ninth Circuit Rules FCRA Plaintiff Has Article III Standing
On August 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling that a consumer plaintiff could proceed with his Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) claims because he had sufficiently alleged a “concrete” injury and therefore had standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution. Robins v. Spokeo, Inc., No. 11-56843, 2017 WL 3480695 (9th Cir. Aug. 15, 2017). By way of background, the plaintiff had alleged that the defendant consumer reporting agency “willfully violated various procedural requirements under FCRA,” and consequently published an inaccurate consumer report on its website that “falsely stated his age, marital status, wealth, education level, and profession” and “included a photo of a different person.” In May 2016, the Supreme Court vacated an earlier Ninth Circuit decision, finding that the court failed to consider an essential element of Article III standing: whether the plaintiff alleged a “concrete” injury. (See previous Special Alert here.) After providing some guidance—including that the plaintiff’s injury must be “real” and not “abstract” or merely “procedural”—the high court remanded to the Ninth Circuit for further consideration.
On remand, the court first asked “whether the statutory provisions at issue were established to protect [the plaintiff’s] concrete interests (as opposed to purely procedural rights).” The court answered affirmatively, finding that “the FCRA procedures at issue in this case were crafted to protect consumers’ . . . concrete interest in accurate credit reporting about themselves.” Next, the court asked “whether the specific procedural violations alleged in this case actually harm, or present a material risk of harm to, such interests.” The court again answered affirmatively, finding that the plaintiff sufficiently alleged that he suffered a “real harm” to his “concrete interests in truthful credit reporting.” That is, the plaintiff sufficiently alleged that the defendant “prepared . . . an [inaccurate] report,” “that it then published the report on the Internet,” and that “the nature of the specific alleged reporting inaccuracies” was not “trivial or meaningless,” but instead covered “a broad range of material facts” about the plaintiff’s life “that may be important to employers or others making use of a consumer report.” Finally, the court found that the plaintiff’s allegations were not too speculative, because “both the challenged conduct and the attendant injury have already occurred.” After reaffirming that the plaintiff had adequately alleged the other essential elements of standing, the court remanded to the Central District of California for further proceedings.
Nevada Supreme Court Holds that HOA "Superpriority" Statute Does Not Violate Due Process, Declines to Follow 9th Circuit
On January 26, in Saticoy Bay LLC Series 350 Durango 104 v. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, No 68630, (Nev. Jan 26, 2017), the Nevada Supreme Court reaffirmed its interpretation of the state statute granting priority lien status to unpaid condo assessments (Nev. Rev. Stat. § 116.3116 et seq.); specifically that foreclosure of such liens extinguishes prior-recorded mortgages. The Nevada Supreme Court declined to follow a 2016 ruling by the Ninth Circuit holding that the statute violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Rather, the Nevada Supreme Court stated that the Due Process Clause protects individuals from state actions, and a foreclosing HOA cannot be deemed to be a state actor. In doing so, the court specifically notes that “[w]e acknowledge that the Ninth Circuit has recently held that the Legislature's enactment of NRS 116.3116 et seq. does constitute state action. . . . However, for the aforementioned reasons, we decline to follow its holding.”
Ninth Circuit Orders Tribal Lenders to Comply with CFPB Investigative Demands
On January 20, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion affirming the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California’s 2014 order enforcing the investigative demands against three tribal lending entities. The investigative demands are centered on determining whether small-dollar online lenders or other persons have engaged or are engaging in unlawful acts or practices relating to the advertising, marketing, provision, or collection of small-dollar loan products, in violation the Dodd-Frank Act and other Federal consumer financial laws. According to the opinion, the court claims that in “the Consumer Financial Protection Act, a generally applicable law, Congress did not expressly exclude tribes from the Bureau’s enforcement authority” and thereby, the tribes cannot claim tribal sovereign immunity.
Special Alert: SCOTUS Vacates Ninth Circuit Decision in Case Alleging Procedural FCRA Violations
On May 16, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion vacating the Ninth Circuit’s 2014 ruling that a plaintiff had standing under Article III of the Constitution to sue an alleged consumer reporting agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), for alleged procedural violations of the FCRA, 15 U.S.C § 1681 et seq. Spokeo v. Robins, No. 13-1339 (U.S. May 16, 2016). According to plaintiff Thomas Robins, the reporting agency violated his individualized (rather than collective) statutory rights by reporting inaccurate credit information regarding Robins’s wealth, job status, graduate degree, and marital status in willful noncompliance with certain FCRA requirements. In a 6-2 opinion delivered by Justice Alito, the Court ruled that Robins could not establish standing by alleging a bare procedural violation because Article III requires a concrete injury even in the context of statutory violation. Here, the Ninth Circuit erred in failing to consider separately both the “concrete and particularized” aspects of the injury-in-fact component of standing. The Court opined that the Ninth Circuit’s analysis was incomplete:
[T]he injury-in-fact requirement requires a plaintiff to allege an injury that is both “concrete and particularized.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180-181 (2000) (emphasis added). The Ninth Circuit’s analysis focused on the second characteristic (particularity), but it overlooked the first (concreteness). We therefore…remand for the Ninth Circuit to consider both aspects of the injury-in-fact requirement.
Relying on case law, the Court emphasized that the “irreducible constitutional minimum” of Article III’s standing to sue relies on the plaintiff demonstrating (i) an injury-in-fact; (ii) that the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant; and (iii) that the injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S., 560-561 (U.S. June 12, 1992); Friends of the Earth, Inc., 528 U.S., at 180-181. Spokeo primarily revolves around the first element, establishing an injury-in-fact. Again relying on Lujan, the Court reasoned that to establish injury-in-fact, the plaintiff must “show that he or she suffered ‘an invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’” Lujan, at 560. According to the Court, the Ninth Circuit’s discussion of Robins’s standing to sue, and in particular its discussion of whether Robins had articulated an individualized statutory right rather than a collective right, concerned only the particularization element of establishing an injury-in-fact. The Court stated that the Ninth Circuit’s standing analysis was incomplete because it had failed to consider whether the “concreteness” requirement for an injury-in-fact—whether Robins had a “real” and “not abstract” injury—also had been satisfied. While the Court did make clear that a concrete injury could be intangible and that Congress may identify intangible harms that meet minimum Article III requirements, it noted that “Congress’ role in identifying and elevating intangible harms does not mean that a plaintiff automatically satisfies the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right.”
The Court noted that because the Ninth Circuit had not fully distinguished concreteness from particularization, it had failed to consider whether the reporting agency’s procedural violations of the FCRA constituted a sufficient degree of risk to Robins to meet the concreteness standard. The Court observed that while a procedural violation of the FCRA may, in some cases, be sufficient to establish a concrete injury-in-fact, not all inaccuracies in consumer information, i.e. an incorrect zip code, cause harm or a material risk of harm. Further, because “Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation” the Court explained that “Robins cannot satisfy the demands of Article III by alleging a bare procedural violation.”
The Court vacated the Ninth Circuit’s judgment, and remanded the case for the Ninth Circuit to consider both aspects of the injury-in-fact requirement.
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Questions regarding the matters discussed in this Alert may be directed to any of our lawyers listed below, or to any other BuckleySandler attorney with whom you have consulted in the past.
- Amanda Raines Lawrence, (202) 349-8089
- Fredrick Levin, (310) 424-3984
- Andrew Louis, (202) 349-8061
Ninth Circuit Holds Alleged Statutory Violations Sufficient For Standing Under FCRA
On February 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a plaintiff’s claim against a data broker alleged to have published inaccurate information about him has standing by virtue of the alleged violation of his statutory rights and need not demonstrate injury. Robins v. Spokeo, Inc., No. 11-56843, 2014 WL 407366, (9th Cir. Feb. 4, 2014). The district court held that the plaintiff failed to allege an injury in fact because his claims that the inaccurate information harmed, among other things, his ability to obtain employment did not sufficiently allege any actual or imminent harm. Applying its own precedent established in a long-running RESPA case that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review in 2012, the court held that the violation of a statutory right usually is a sufficient injury to confer standing and that statutory causes of action do not require a showing of actual harm. The court determined that violations of statutory rights created by FCRA are concrete injuries that Congress can elevate to the status of legally cognizable injuries and are therefore sufficient to satisfy Article III’s injury-in-fact requirement. Further, the plaintiff adequately pled causation and redressability because (i) an alleged violation of a statutory provision caused the violation of a right created by that provision; and (ii) FCRA provides for monetary damages to redress the violation. The court reversed the trial court and remanded.