The Supreme Court today ruled in favor of data broker Spokeo, overturning a lower court’s ruling by a 6-2 vote. The plaintiff in the case, Thomas Robins, alleged he’d suffered harm when Spokeo reported false information about him, a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Supreme Court said, however, “the lower court had failed to consider whether Robins had suffered a ‘concrete’ harm,” Fortune reports. Jay Edelson, the plaintiff’s lead counsel, told Daily Dashboard he isn’t concerned. In fact, he called the case a “90 percent win for consumers and privacy advocates,” because the courts didn’t change anything with respect to the requirement for proving harm, but instead told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to do “a kind of more rigorous analysis.” Edelson further said he’s not concerned “about the impact on the Spokeo case or on privacy cases more generally.” Editor’s note: Rafae Bhatti, CIPM, CIPP/US, recently wrote about what was at stake in the case for Privacy Tracker, advocating the court rule in favor of Robins.
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