Spokeo, Inc. v. Thomas Robins

The Court’s prior opinion in this case held that a statutory violation is not by itself sufficient to satisfy Article III’s injury in fact requirement—because the Constitution requires an injury that “actually exist[s]” and is “‘real,’ and not ‘abstract.’” 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1548 (2016). The Court recognized that some “intangible” harms can qualify as injuries in fact and identified “history and the judgment of Congress” as considerations relevant to that determination. Id. at 1549. But the Court left for remand the application of that standard to the allegations in this case. In the nearly two years since this Court’s decision, hundreds of lower courts have adopted conflicting interpretations of this Court’s standard in addressing the sufficiency of intangible injury allegations. Some courts require the plaintiff to allege that the statutory violation resulted in real-world harm, or an imminent risk of such harm, to the plaintiff. Other courts hold that as long as a statute protects “concrete interests,” alleging a statutory violation can establish injury in fact, even if the plaintiff did not herself suffer actual or imminent real-world harm. Here, the Ninth Circuit held that the Fair Credit Reporting Act protects a concrete interest in accurate credit reporting, and that the alleged inaccuracies are of the type that injure that interest because they could harm someone like the plaintiff. The question presented is: Whether the injury in fact requirement is satisfied by claimed intangible harm to an interest protected by the underlying statute, even if the plaintiff cannot allege that she suffered either real-world harm or an imminent risk of such harm.