The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear arguments in a Fair Credit Reporting Act case that will answer the question of whether every member of a class must have Article III standing in order to recover damages, which could significantly impact the future of class actions across the country, according to legal experts.
A date to hear arguments in the case of TransUnion v. Ramirez has not yet been set.
This case is being compared to the impact that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Spokeo v. Robins has had, which determined that statutory violations of a law were not sufficient to establish standing to file a federal lawsuit under Article III of the Constitution.
In the case, TransUnion was sued for not verifying the names of individuals who had alerts added to their credit reports that indicated they may be on a terrorist watch list. The process of adding those alerts was done automatically and without human intervention. Ramirez went to a car dealership to buy a car, but his credit application was flagged for matching two names that were on the watch list.
Ramirez filed a lawsuit, alleging TransUnion violated the FCRA, and a District Court judge certified a class of individuals who had similar experiences. Ultimately, a jury awarded $60 million to the class members, a number that was reduced to $40 million when TransUnion appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit, however, took the unusual step of noting that every class member needed to have Article III standing at the damages phase of the suit. TransUnion appealed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court, which decided yesterday to hear arguments in the case.
