Nina Totenberg reports:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday sided with the TransUnion credit reporting company, ruling that thousands of consumers whose names were improperly flagged as potential terrorists cannot sue the company for damages.
By a 5-to-4 vote, the court ruled that Congress does not have the power under the Constitution to establish statutory rights and the power to enforce those rights with private lawsuits.
At issue in the case was the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which regulates how consumer credit agencies report and disseminate personal information. Specifically, the case centered on the actions of TransUnion, one of the “big three” credit reporting companies in the nation. It compiles information on consumers and sells that information to businesses that want to ascertain creditworthiness. Beginning in 2002, TransUnion placed an alert on those individuals whose first and last names matched the names on the Treasury Department’s list of terrorists, drug traffickers, or other serious criminals. The alert told businesses that bought the credit reports that the individuals were a “potential match” for those flagged on the Treasury Department list.
Read more on NPR. The case is TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 20-297. The ruling can be found here.
There is a lot of commentary out there already on this opinion and the strong dissents, such as this gem by Justice Clarence Thomas:
“Ultimately, the majority seems to pose to the reader a single rhetorical question: Who could possibly think that a person is harmed when he requests and is sent an incomplete credit report, or is sent a suspicious notice informing him that he may be a designated drug trafficker or terrorist, or is not sent anything informing him of how to remove this inaccurate red flag? The answer is, of course, legion: Congress, the president, the jury, the District Court, the Ninth Circuit, and four members of this court.”
Elsewhere you can find an “I told you so!” post by Eric Troutman of Squire Patton Boggs: SPOKEO ON STEROIDS: It Happened–Supreme Court Holds Unnamed Class Members Must Have Standing to Recover Damages at Trial and Class Actions as We Know them Are Dead (Again)