136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016)
Spokeo, Inc. operates a website known as a people search engine. Users can input a person's name, phone number, or email address to conduct searches across a wide variety of databases. The site provides personal information about individuals, including address, phone number, marital status, approximate age, occupation, hobbies, finances, shopping habits, and musical preferences.1
Thomas Robins discovered that a profile generated about him on Spokeo contained several inaccuracies. These included statements that he was married with children, in his fifties, employed, relatively affluent, and holding a graduate degree, when in fact none of this was true.2
Robins filed a class action complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against Spokeo. He alleged that the company willfully failed to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of consumer reports as required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.3 The District Court dismissed the complaint, determining that Robins had not properly pleaded an injury in fact.4
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that dismissal.5 It concluded that Robins had adequately alleged injury in fact based on the violation of his statutory rights and the individualized nature of his interests in his credit information.6
The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case after the Ninth Circuit's decision in 2014.7
Whether the Ninth Circuit's Article III standing analysis was incomplete because it failed to consider both the particularization and concreteness aspects of the injury-in-fact requirement?8
To establish Article III standing, a plaintiff must demonstrate an injury in fact that is both concrete and particularized, as well as actual or imminent; the Ninth Circuit's focus solely on particularization rendered its analysis incomplete under Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560.9
Yes. The Ninth Circuit observed only that Robins alleged Spokeo violated his statutory rights rather than those of others and that his personal interests in his credit information were individualized. These observations addressed particularization alone and elided the independent concreteness requirement that an injury must actually exist.10 Under the established facts, the District Court had dismissed the complaint for failure to plead injury in fact.
The Ninth Circuit reversed without examining whether the alleged FCRA procedural violations entailed a degree of risk sufficient to constitute concrete harm, such as actual dissemination of false information affecting Robins.11 The Supreme Court therefore vacated and remanded because the standing analysis remained incomplete when measured against the requirement that injury in fact be both concrete and particularized.12
The Ninth Circuit's Article III standing analysis was incomplete.13
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Thomas concurred in the judgment vacating and remanding. He explained that standing doctrine distinguishes between private rights, where violation of a personal legal right historically sufficed to establish injury in fact, and public rights, where a plaintiff must show concrete, individualized harm beyond the general public.14 Applying this framework to the FCRA, Thomas noted that section 1681e(b) may create a private duty owed personally to Robins regarding accuracy of information about him, so that violation alone could satisfy injury in fact, while other provisions might involve public duties requiring additional concrete harm; he therefore agreed remand was necessary to assess the nature of Robins' specific claim.15
Joined by Justice Sotomayor
Justice Ginsburg dissented, joined by Justice Sotomayor. She maintained that Robins' allegations already satisfied concreteness because the specific inaccuracies about his marital status, age, employment, education, and wealth level, disseminated while he was seeking work, created a real risk of harm to his employment prospects.16 Ginsburg argued there was no need for remand to address concreteness, as the particularized injury described in the complaint was sufficiently concrete under precedents recognizing intangible harms tied to statutory protections, and the FCRA's procedural requirements were designed to prevent exactly this type of harm.17