Supreme Court Reverses Ninth Circuit for Incomplete Standing Analysis | Practical Law

Supreme Court Reverses Ninth Circuit for Incomplete Standing Analysis | Practical Law

In Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, the US Supreme Court held that a bare procedural statutory violation, without any concrete harm, does not satisfy Article III's injury-in-fact requirement.

Supreme Court Reverses Ninth Circuit for Incomplete Standing Analysis

Practical Law Legal Update w-002-4289 (Approx. 4 pages)

Supreme Court Reverses Ninth Circuit for Incomplete Standing Analysis

by Practical Law Litigation
Published on 16 May 2016 • USA (National/Federal)
In Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, the US Supreme Court held that a bare procedural statutory violation, without any concrete harm, does not satisfy Article III's injury-in-fact requirement.
On May 16, 2016, in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, the US Supreme Court reversed the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for failing to consider both aspects of the injury-in-fact requirement in its Article III standing analysis ( (May 16, 2016)).
Spokeo is an alleged consumer reporting agency that operates a "people search engine," where information is searched from a wide variety of databases. When Thomas Robins learned that some of the information Spokeo gathered and disseminated about him was incorrect, he filed a complaint on his own behalf and on behalf of a class of similarly situated individuals for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The district court dismissed his complaint for lack of Article III standing because Robins had not properly pled any injury-in-fact resulting from the incorrect information on the website.
The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that Robins adequately alleged injury-in-fact because Robins alleged that:
  • Spokeo violated his statutory rights and not just the rights of other people.
  • His personal interest in the handling of his credit information was individualized rather than collective.
The Supreme Court reversed, holding that this analysis was incomplete because the Ninth Circuit failed to consider both established aspects of the injury-in-fact requirement. Following its own precedents, the Court reiterated that to establish Article III standing a plaintiff must allege an injury that is both:
  • Concrete.
  • Particularized.
The Supreme Court further clarified that Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation. A bare procedural violation of the FCRA without any concrete harm (for example, reporting an incorrect zip code) would not satisfy Article III's injury-in-fact requirement. According to the Court, for an injury to be concrete, "it must actually exist." The Court also clarified that where a plaintiff alleges a procedural violation of a statutory right, courts must determine whether that violation entails a degree of risk sufficient to meet Article III's concreteness requirement.
Because the Ninth Circuit had only focused on the particularity of the alleged injury, without analyzing concreteness, the Court vacated the judgment and remanded for consideration of whether the particular violations Robins alleged met the concreteness requirement.