Man vs. the internet at the Supreme Court

When Thomas Robins looked himself up on the people search site Spokeo, he was surprised to see he had a graduate degree, was married with children, and was rather wealthy, none of which was true. Robins, concerned the false information could cost him a job or other unknown damages, sued, alleging Spokeo violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by publishing false information about him.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, a class-action lawsuit, last week. Millions of dollars are at stake since violations of the FCRA carry a $1,000 fine per instance.

Spokeo lawyer Andrew Pincus argued Robins didn’t have any proven damages.

“All of his arguments about why there was any tangible harm to him were speculative and flunked this court’s standard,” Pincus said.

Justice Elena Kagan pointed out harm might be difficult to prove in this case.

“People get these reports, and you don’t know what they’re doing with these reports,” she said. “They might have not given you a job for that reason, or they might have not given you a job for some other reason. They might have not given you credit for that reason, or they might have not given you credit for some other reason. I mean, it’s actually the quintessential kind of injury that you will never be able to detect and surely not to prove.”

Aligned with Robins are consumer advocates who argue regular folks don’t have much recourse when companies get information like this wrong. The Obama administration also sides with Robins, arguing Spokeo doesn’t have a good way to fix the problem.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce all argue if Spokeo loses, opportunistic lawyers will bring expensive class action suits, allege speculative harm, and thereby cripple the digital industry

The consistently liberal justices seemed eager to let the class action proceed despite no proven harm, while the four conservative justices worried about an avalanche of lawsuits. Justice Anthony Kennedy was quiet during arguments; his vote likely will decide the matter, as is often the case.

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