“No concrete harm, no standing.” For the majority in
TransUnion v. Ramirez (No. 20-297), it was that simple. The case involved a key class action issue: whether members of a class who may have been subjected to the same violation of law but who suffered no concrete injury could properly take part in a class-action lawsuit. The Ninth Circuit held that they could, but, in a 5-4 decision penned by Justice Kavanaugh, the Court disagreed.
In the wake of the September 11th attacks, TransUnion developed a new and more expensive type of credit report that flagged whether an individual’s name matched a name on a list of “Specially Designated Nationals,” prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (the OFAC list). The OFAC list included terrorists, drug-traffickers, and other serious criminals. In general, U.S. businesses are prohibited from doing business with those on the list, which obviously would create issues for anyone falsel