Supreme Court to Hear BG Appeal in VPPA Case
The Supreme Court of the United States has granted certiorari in Salazar v. Paramount Global, a hotly litigated case about the meaning of “consumer” under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).
Partner Joshua I. Hammack led the appellate team, with valuable assistance from Michael L. Murphy, Nicholas S. Johnson, Allison A. Bruff, and Hallie H. Arena, as well as paralegal support from Manny Rios. The matter will now proceed to merits briefing and argument before the Supreme Court.
The VPPA was enacted in 1988, shortly after a local D.C. video store disclosed the rental records of Judge Robert Bork—who was then under consideration for a seat on the Supreme Court—to a journalist. The law broadly prohibits a video tape service provider from knowingly disclosing a consumer’s personally identifiable information without first obtaining that consumer’s consent. As most relevant here, the VPPA defines “consumer” to include a “subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider.”
In this case, Paramount disclosed Mr. Salazar’s Facebook ID (a unique numerical identifier Facebook assigns to each user) and video-watching history to Facebook without his consent. Mr. Salazar sued, alleging Paramount’s conduct violated the VPPA. But both lower courts held Mr. Salazar was not a statutory “consumer” because he subscribed only to Paramount’s online newsletter, and not to its audiovisual goods or services. As a result, both lower courts dismissed his VPPA claim.