2nd Circuit Dismisses VPPA Suit Against NFL
A court dismissed a class action lawsuit against the NFL that alleged the league violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by employing the Meta-tracking pixel without user notice and consent. Issued Friday, the summary order ruled that an "ordinary person" could not determine a user's Facebook ID through the pixel's transmission.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Privacy Daily provides accurate coverage of newsworthy developments in data protection legislation, regulation, litigation, and enforcement for privacy professionals responsible for ensuring effective organizational data privacy compliance.
"We focused on whether an ordinary person would be able to understand the actual underlying code communication itself, regardless of how the code is later manipulated or used by Facebook," said Chief Judge Ann Livingston and Judges Jon Newman and Richard Sullivan of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. "Personally identifiable information encompasses information that would allow an ordinary person to identify a consumer’s video-watching habits, but not information that only a sophisticated technology company could use to do so.”
Additionally, "the existence of tools like ChatGPT ... would not alter our conclusion in this case."
The case was on appeal from the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, where plaintiff Brandon Hughes and others alleged their video-watching history on NFL.com was transmitted to Facebook without their knowledge or consent, and their status as digital subscribers meant the NFL had violated the VPPA. The district court dismissed case 22-10743 in September 2024 for failure to state a claim.
Previously, the 2nd Circuit used the "ordinary person" standard to dismiss a VPPA case against Flipps Media (see 2505010046). NBCU is using the standard as an argument to get a district court to drop a VPPA case (see 2506060030).