Demetrius Smith, et al. v. Rack Room Shoes, Inc.

Background

Demetrius Smith and Maia Williams visited and purchased shoes from rackroomshoes.com in 2024. They alleged that Rack Room Shoes enabled third-party companies—including Meta, Attentive, Zeta, Adobe, and Google—to intercept information about their website activity, including items they viewed, added to their carts, and purchased. Their proposed class claims arose under California Invasion of Privacy Act Sections 631 and 632 and the Federal Wiretap Act.

The plaintiffs sought certification of six classes. At the class-certification stage, they had to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that at least one named plaintiff suffered an injury sufficient to establish Article III standing, meaning a concrete injury that can be connected to the defendant’s conduct and remedied by the court.

Standing and the alleged interception

The court considered the plaintiffs’ theory that the Meta Pixel actually captured their personally identifiable browsing activity. Although records showed Meta Pixel activity associated with browsers signed in to Smith’s and Williams’s Facebook accounts during earlier years, the court found no evidence that this activity was their own browsing. Smith testified that he visited the website only once, in 2024, and Williams described her 2024 visit as her first visit. The court found no evidence that the Meta Pixel or another tracker captured either plaintiff’s browsing activity during the relevant 2024 visits.

The court also rejected the argument that Rack Room’s general use of third-party trackers was enough to prove actual tracking. The evidence showed that whether a tracker collects information that can be linked to a particular visitor depends on factors such as the browser, whether the device is signed in to a social-media account, and cookie-blocking settings. The presence of a tracker therefore did not establish that either plaintiff’s personally identifiable information was collected.

Attempted-interception theory

For the California privacy claims, the plaintiffs argued that an attempted interception could be an injury even if no information was actually collected. The court explained that a claimed injury must have a close relationship to a type of harm traditionally recognized by law. It found that the mere presence of active trackers, without actual tracking, did not closely resemble the traditional privacy harm of highly offensive intrusion into a person’s private affairs.

The court found no evidence that the trackers attempted to collect embarrassing, invasive, or otherwise private information from the plaintiffs while they used a shoe website. It also found insufficient evidence that the Meta Pixel compiled either plaintiff’s online activities into unusually comprehensive and sensitive profiles. The plaintiffs’ testimony that shoe browsing was generally sensitive did not establish that their particular activity was especially private or sensitive.

The court further found that Rack Room’s Privacy Policy did not establish the required privacy expectation. The plaintiffs did not read the policy, and the court found its language ambiguous about whether third parties could collect personally identifiable information. Even assuming the policy could be considered, the court concluded that it did not create a heightened expectation of privacy in the plaintiffs’ activity on the website.

Ruling

Because the plaintiffs did not show an injury sufficient for Article III standing, the court dismissed without prejudice the three claims for which class certification was sought: the Federal Wiretap Act claim and the California Invasion of Privacy Act claims under Sections 631 and 632. The court denied the Motion for Class Certification.

The court granted Rack Room’s Administrative Motion for Leave to file a Surreply, overruled the objection to the plaintiffs’ reply evidence, and denied the motion to strike the expert report as moot. The parties were ordered to submit a proposed case schedule for the two remaining individual claims under California Penal Code Section 502 and common-law invasion of privacy. Judge Rita F. Lin signed the order.