Plaintiffs, Meta Move to Transfer N.C. Pixel Privacy Class Action to Calif.

The plaintiffs who brought a class action Sept. 1 in U.S. District Court for Middle North Carolina alleging their medical privacy was violated by Facebook’s Pixel tracking tool agree with Meta that the case should be severed and transferred to Northern California, said the parties in a joint motion filed Saturday in docket 1:22-cv-00727. The suit also names Duke University and the WakeMed health system as defendants. The complaint is a putative class action with a nationwide class of all Facebook users who are current or former patients of medical providers in the U.S. with “web properties through which Facebook acquired patient communications relating to medical provider patient portals, appointments, phone calls, and communications associated with patient portal users,” and did so without “valid” consent, said the motion. Four other class actions have been filed against Meta in Northern California, and a fifth was transferred there from the Northern District of Illinois and a sixth was transferred there from the Western District of Pennsylvania, it said: “All six of these actions allege similar facts and events and bring similar claims to those that Plaintiffs allege in this action.” Northern California granted a motion Oct. 12 to consolidate all the California actions into a single case (“In re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation”) in docket 22-cv-04680, said the motion. The North Carolina plaintiffs agreed “it would conserve resources and promote judicial economy” to sever and transfer the case to Northern California, it said.