On June 25, 2021, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Transunion LLC v. Ramirez. In this case, a class of plaintiffs sued the credit reporting company TransUnion under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The plaintiffs alleged that the process Transunion used to flag consumer credit worthiness accounts—running consumers names against the U.S. Treasury Departments’ Office of Foreign Assets Control database of terrorists, traffickers, and other criminals and flagging those names that matched database listed names—resulted in harm to the plaintiffs where the match was only a coincidence.

Although the initial class contained 8,185 members, only 1,853 class members incurred harm since Transunion only conveyed credit reports flags for that subset to third parties during the relevant period.

The District Court ruled the whole 8,185 member class had standing to sue. The Supreme Court reversed on the standing issue, ruling that the 6,332 class members whose information had not been conveyed to third parties during the relevant period had no Article III standing since they had suffered no cognizable injury.

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-- Theodore "Ted" Frank, Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute

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