Plaintiff Sufficiently Alleges CIPA Violations vs. Reuters, Says Opposition

Defendant Reuters doesn’t dispute that it collected users’ IP addresses and shared that data with third parties, said Zhizhi Xu’s memorandum Friday (docket 1:24-cv-02466) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in opposition to Reuters’ May 24 motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) (see 2405280015). The company instead asserts that Xu lacks standing because the disclosure of IP addresses doesn’t “implicate traditional privacy interests, and the data is merely basic contact information,” it said. But the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple circuits have held that the right to privacy encompasses the individual’s control of information concerning his or his person, said Xu’s opposition. When statutes that codify such substantive privacy rights are violated, such a violation gives rise to a concrete injury sufficient to confer standing, it said. In arguing that Xu doesn’t sufficiently allege a CIPA violation, Reuters relies on an “incorrectly reasoned string of cases,” it said. Reuters then “misconstrues the plain text” of the CIPA, or attempts to “graft language onto the statute” that isn’t present, it said. It ignores that the California legislature intended for the CIPA to establish broad privacy protections, which supports an expansive reading to the statute, it said.