It has been a year since the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo v. Robins, 136 S.Ct. 1540 (2016), in which the court reemphasized that the existence of a statutory violation did not ipso facto create standing to sue in federal court, even in the presence of a congressionally created private right of action to sue for such a violation. While Spokeo received much attention from the bar and quickly became a mainstay in class action briefing, it remains widely misunderstood, and at least one litigant has been sanctioned for failing to grasp its meaning. When Spokeo is properly understood as a jurisdictional decision, it becomes clear that it will not, as some have predicted, spell the demise of an entire category of class actions. Instead, it will simply shift the adjudication of those cases to state court.
Spokeo was a “statutory” class action, a case in which the plaintiff’s claims derived from the defendant’s violation of a statutory scheme that provides for statutory damages. In Spokeo, the plaintiff, Robins, alleged that Spokeo, a “people search engine,” had violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) when generating his personal profile. Robins sought statutory damages for himself and on behalf of a putative class. The district court dismissed the case, but not based upon the plaintiff’s failure to plead an element of a FCRA claim. Rather, it concluded Robins had not pled an “injury in fact,” and thus lacked “constitutional” or “Article III” standing to pursue his case. The Ninth Circuit reversed and certiorari was granted.
