Spokeo Redux: Ninth Circuit Holds That a Statutory Violation under FCRA May, without More, Establish a Concrete Injury for Purposes of Article III Standing

By: Andrew C. Glass, Gregory N. Blase, Roger L. Smerage, Hollee M. Watson

The Ninth Circuit has opined, again, on whether a statutory violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681, et seq.—by itself—constitutes a concrete injury for Article III standing purposes. Last year, in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, the United States Supreme Court vacated and remanded the Ninth Circuit’s original opinion on the issue. Although the Ninth Circuit had reviewed the plaintiff’s allegations for existence of a particularized injury, it had not separately analyzed whether they described a sufficiently concrete injury. In Spokeo, the Supreme Court ruled that “a bare procedural violation [of a federal statute], divorced from any concrete harm,” does not suffice to “satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III.” But the Court declined to define a “bare procedural violation” in favor of allowing the Ninth Circuit to first consider the question. Now that the Ninth Circuit has done so, the Supreme Court may take up the question once more.

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