LogFAQs > #955460477

NFUN posted...

hey xp check this out

https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/scotus-rules-against-plaintiffs-branded-by-credit-agencies-with-scarlet- letter-of-our-time-thomas-joins-liberals-to-dissent

Well, let's see. That article certainly makes the decision seem insane so let me flip through the opinion and dissents...

All right, the article mostly summarizes the specifics of the case, but I'll add my own for those who don't want to read it: We've got a class-action lawsuit against TransUnion by 8185 people. TransUnion being a credit reporting agency they adopted an add-on module for companies that used them for credit screening that beyond the standard credit check would also match the first and last names against government list of terrorists, drug traffickers, and serious criminals. Literally that was it, just a first + last name check and if it was a hit it flagged them as a potential match.

Now 1853 of the people in the lawsuit, including the lead plantiff (a guy who was denied a car loan by the dealership who was told in front of his family he was a match for a potential terrorist and his wife had to buy the car and take the loan out in her name) had this "potential match" flag sent out to third-party businesses. The remaining 6332 did not have proof that info was sent out (but would be listed as such in TransUnion's system.)

There's also three prongs to the class lawsuit but I'll focus on the first one: Whether or not the members of the class action have standing and suffered harm. Kavanaugh and the majority reach the conclusion that despite Congress passing a law to grant a cause to sue for consumers (via regulation requirements on credit reporting companies) that... simply doesn't matter. They allege that Congress doing so is a separation-of-powers violation of all things. In spite of the Court previously ruling that it is instructive to look to Congress and the laws they enact in such case to glean intent.

Like, on its face, the ruling of "Okay the 1853 people who had that info distributed to a third-party have sufficiently demonstrated harm but the other 6332 people who couldn't prove it have not" may not sound super unreasonable (and indeed at first glance reading the opinion nothing immediately pinged me as insane) but the way the court gets there seems like it could (and knowing corporations, probably will) have really bad consequences.

Thomas's dissent (joined by the 3 liberals) gets into this where he points out that historically there's been a distinction between an individual suing on the basis of a personal right vs. suing on behalf of a right that belong to the community courts have treated them differently. In the former only a violation of the right needs to be proven (he uses an example of trespassing; the plaintiff would only need to demonstrate the violation of the right happened) while in the latter (he uses the example of overgrazing on public lands) you need to prove the violation and damage (so like a GameStop employee probably would lack standing to sue someone for overgrazing on public lands unless they also happened to be a farmer or something.)

Essentially, the dissent argues that the violation of a private right itself constitutes harm. And that for the first time in history, they've found that an injury-in-law is inherently insufficient to attain standing as well as constitutionally prevent legislatures from creating legal rights that are enforceable in federal court. He also points out that even putting aside all these bigger picture issues, the majority boils down the case to a rhetorical [paraphrased] "Who could possibly think a person is harmed when they request and sent an incomplete credit report, a notice they may be a drug trafficker or terrorist and NOT sent any information on how to remove the inaccurate flag?" as if the answer is an obvious "no one, how silly lol" to which he answers (factually): "Congress, the President, the jury, the District Court, the Ninth Circuit, and four Members of this Court."

Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Breyer, also file a separate dissent where she points out that what the majority has done here is transform the idea of standing/case-or-controversy from a limit on the power of a court (by preventing them from just weighing in on the actions of the executive or legislature and making rulings when no one with stakes has asked them to) to an expansion of the power of the judiciary by ruling that actually it should be read to mean the judiciary decides what qualifies as harm, and the legislature can fuck off if it passes a law stating that individuals should be granted legal rights and a means to pursue redress if they are violated.

She also dunks on the majority's view that the risk of TransUnion distributing the information of the ~6000 who did not demonstrate it was "too speculative" when TransUnion is literally a company in the business of distributing said information to companies and that putting that aside, there's already a 25% rate of them clearly fucking up so how is that percentage not sufficient to give the others sufficient ground to be at legally sufficient risk of harm? She notes she differs on Thomas's opinion in only one regard and that she suspects it would not even be applicable in all but the most unusual of cases wrt Congress's authority in such cases and that in the vast majority of cases they (she and Thomas) would end up at the same place regardless of their different views on it.

tl;dr: Bad ruling. Probably even worse than I imagine because I can't fully comprehend the consequences that can spiral out of this. The dissent makes the far more compelling argument here and exposes the majority opinion as just... really bad, even if may perhaps come off as more benign than that.

masterplum posted...

I actually agree with this ruling. Needing damages to sue seems completely sensible. Our justice system is already sue happy as it is.

Not really the issue at hand in this case! It's more a matter of this opinion just overturning precedent on what qualifies as harm... and then stripping legislatures of its power to identify and define harms as well as create rights. Even the dissents point out that they're not opening up to "anyone can sue anyone for hypotheticals" just that the way the majority has ruled has overturned centuries of legal precedent and enshrined a concept that didn't even exist for them until 50 years ago as the new standard and thereby seized the power from the other two branches for themselves.

---

xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?