Court Dismisses Email Pixels Suit Against Marshalls
The U.S. District Court for Massachusetts ruled Friday that it will dismiss a class-action lawsuit against TJX Companies, parent of retailer Marshalls, for lack of jurisdiction and since the plaintiff failed to allege a concrete harm. The plaintiff alleged that a “spy pixel” was embedded in TJX's promotional emails, which collected information from the receivers without their consent, violating the Arizona Telephone, Utility and Communication Service Records Act.
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“Plaintiff’s email address was certainly not private, given that she provided it to Defendant when she consented to receive the promotional emails,” Judge Allison Burroughs said in the dismissal. “Further, a glimpse into Plaintiff’s email inbox is a far cry from peeking into her upstairs window, particularly where she voluntarily subscribed to Defendant’s emails and where there is no allegation that the spy pixels intruded into any other private area of her email inbox or computer.”
Plaintiff Arlette Campos sued TJX in April 2024, alleging that Marshalls, a subset of TJX, procured private information identifying her every time she opened and read promotional materials between September 2022 and March 2024, despite Campos not giving the company consent. TJX motioned to dismiss the suit on various grounds, including that the plaintiff did not suffer a concrete injury.
“The Court is sympathetic to Plaintiff’s dislike of the use of pixel tracking software, but Plaintiff’s recourse does not lie in federal court,” Burroughs said.