Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07047/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07047-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Anthropologie, Inc.
Appellee
Whitney Hancock
Appellant
Urban Outfitters, Inc.
Appellee
Jamie White
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 19, 2015 Decided July 26, 2016

No. 14-7047

WHITNEY HANCOCK, ON BEHALF OF HERSELF AND ALL OTHERS 

SIMILARLY SITUATED, AND JAMIE WHITE, ON BEHALF OF 

HERSELF AND ALL OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED,

APPELLANTS

v.

URBAN OUTFITTERS, INC. AND ANTHROPOLOGIE, INC.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:13-cv-00939)

Mikhael D. Charnoff argued the cause for appellants. 

With him on the briefs was Scott M. Perry.

James M. Burns argued the cause and filed the brief for 

appellees.

Before: MILLETT, Circuit Judge, and EDWARDS and 

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge MILLETT.

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MILLETT, Circuit Judge: Whitney Hancock and Jamie 

White made purchases with their credit cards at two clothing 

stores in the District of Columbia. As part of those creditcard transactions, the cashiers asked each for her zip code, 

and each provided it. Hancock and White then filed suit in 

federal court, alleging that those zip code requests violated 

two D.C. consumer protection laws. The district court 

dismissed the complaint with prejudice for failure to state a 

claim. But neither plaintiff has alleged a concrete Article III 

injury tied to disclosure of her zip code that could support 

standing, so the district court lacked jurisdiction to decide the 

merits of the case. Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s 

decision and remand for dismissal of the case.

I

A

The District of Columbia’s Use of Consumer 

Identification Information Act (“Identification Act”), D.C. 

Code § 47-3151 et seq., provides in relevant part that “no 

person shall, as a condition of accepting a credit card as 

payment for a sale of goods or services, request or record the 

address or telephone number of a credit card holder on the 

credit card transaction form,” id. § 47-3153. 

The District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection 

Procedures Act (“Consumer Protection Act”), D.C. Code 

§ 28-3901 et seq., provides that, “whether or not any 

consumer is in fact misled, deceived or damaged thereby,” no 

person may make a “misrepresent[ation] as to a material fact 

which has a tendency to mislead”; “fail to state a material fact 

if such failure tends to mislead”; or “use deceptive 

representations” in “connection with goods or services,” id.

§ 28-3904(e), (f), (t).

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B

In May 2013, Whitney Hancock made a credit card 

purchase at an Anthropologie retail clothing store in 

Washington, D.C. Hancock alleges that the cashier first 

swiped her credit card in a credit card machine. Then the 

cashier asked for her zip code and entered it into the store’s 

point of sale register, rather than into the credit card machine. 

The next month, Jamie White made two credit card 

purchases at an Urban Outfitters retail clothing store in 

Washington, D.C. Her factual allegations are identical in 

every relevant way: in both transactions, the cashier swiped 

her credit card in a credit card machine, asked for her zip 

code, and then entered it into the point of sale register. 

Hancock and White filed a putative class action in the 

United States District Court for the District of Columbia. 

They allege that Urban Outfitters’ and Anthropologie’s (the 

“Stores”) zip code requests violated the Identification Act and 

the Consumer Protection Act. More specifically, Hancock 

and White allege that, because their zip codes are part of their 

addresses, the Stores’ request for zip codes violated the 

Identification Act’s ban on obtaining addresses as a condition 

of a credit card transaction. They also allege that the requests 

for their zip codes violated the Consumer Protection Act by 

(i) falsely implying to consumers that disclosure of their zip 

codes is required to complete their credit-card transactions;

(ii) failing to state the material fact that the provision of a zip

code is optional; and (iii) deceptively representing that

requests for zip codes are legal and necessary to complete 

credit-card transactions. 

The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to 

state a claim. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). The court 

acknowledged the Stores’ contention that Hancock and White 

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had not pled an injury sufficient for Article III standing, but 

found it “unnecessary” to address that jurisdictional question 

because the complaint failed to state a claim. J.A. 165. With 

respect to the Identification Act, the court held that a zip code 

is not by itself an “address” that the law protects from 

disclosure. Id. at 165–167 (quoting D.C. Code § 47-3153). 

The court further ruled that Hancock’s and White’s failure to 

allege that the transactions would not have been completed if 

they had not provided their zip codes foreclosed their claims 

under the Consumer Protection Act.

Hancock and White appealed. Following oral argument, 

the Supreme Court granted review in Spokeo v. Robins, No. 

13-1339, to decide whether a procedural violation of the Fair 

Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq., can give rise 

to Article III standing. On May 20, 2015, we ordered this

appeal held in abeyance pending the Supreme Court’s 

decision in Spokeo, which was issued on May 16, 2016. See 

Spokeo v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016).

II

Federal courts cannot address the merits of a case until 

jurisdiction—the power to decide—is established. One 

“essential and unchanging” component of federal court 

jurisdiction is the “requirement that a litigant have standing to 

invoke the authority of a federal court.” DaimlerChrysler 

Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 342 (2006). Until that 

jurisdictional threshold is crossed, “the court cannot proceed 

at all in any cause.” Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better 

Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 94 (1998) (quoting Ex parte 

McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 506, 514 (1868)). 

The district court erred at the outset when it bypassed the 

jurisdictional question of Hancock’s and White’s standing and 

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dove into the merits of this case. In doing so, the district 

court stepped where the Constitution forbade it to tread. That 

is because Hancock and White lack Article III standing in this 

case.

“[T]he doctrine of standing serves to identify those 

disputes which are appropriately resolved through the judicial 

process.” Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 155 (1990). 

“[T]he irreducible constitutional minimum of standing” 

requires “an injury in fact” that is both “concrete and 

particularized,” and “actual or imminent, not conjectural or 

hypothetical.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 

560 (1992). Plaintiffs must also demonstrate “a causal 

connection between the injury and the conduct complained 

of,” and “a likelihood that a court ruling in [plaintiffs’] favor 

would remedy their injury.” Id. at 561, 595. 

Those requirements of injury, causation, and 

redressability “confine[] the federal courts to a properly 

judicial role” of resolving actual disputes between parties,

rather than questions more appropriately addressed to the 

other branches of government. Spokeo, 136 S. Ct. at 1547. 

Because this case arises at the motion to dismiss stage, the 

complaint need only “state[] a plausible claim” that each 

element of standing is satisfied. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 

662, 678–679 (2009). We accept facts alleged in the 

complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences from 

those facts in the plaintiffs’ favor. See, e.g., Bregman v. 

Perles, 747 F.3d 873, 875 (D.C. Cir. 2014).

The complaint here does not get out of the starting gate. 

It fails to allege that Hancock or White suffered any 

cognizable injury as a result of the zip code disclosures. 

Indeed, at oral argument, Hancock’s and White’s counsel 

candidly admitted that “the only injury * * * that the named 

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plaintiffs suffered was they were asked for a zip code 

when * * * [under] the law they should not have been.” Oral 

Arg. Tr. 5. In other words, they assert only a bare violation of 

the requirements of D.C. law in the course of their purchases.

In arguing for standing, Hancock and White simply assert 

that “[t]he actual or threatened injury required by Art. III may 

exist solely by virtue of statutes creating legal rights, the 

invasion of which creates standing.” Pet. Br. at 20 (quoting 

Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 (1975) (internal quotation 

marks omitted)). But they vastly overread that case. The 

Supreme Court has been clear that the legislature “cannot 

erase Article III’s standing requirements by statutorily 

granting the right to sue to a plaintiff who would not 

otherwise have standing” under Article III. Spokeo, 136 S. 

Ct. at 1547–1548 (quoting Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 820 

n.3 (1997)) (internal quotation mark omitted). Instead, an 

asserted injury to even a statutorily conferred right “must

actually exist,” Spokeo, 136 S. Ct. at 1548, and must have 

“affect[ed] the plaintiff in a personal and individual way,” id.

at 1543 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n.1). 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo thus closes the 

door on Hancock and White’s claim that the Stores’ mere 

request for a zip code, standing alone, amounted to an Article 

III injury. Spokeo held that plaintiffs must have suffered an 

actual (or imminent) injury that is both particularized and 

“concrete * * * even in the context of a statutory violation.” 

136 S. Ct. at 1549. For that reason, a plaintiff cannot “allege 

a bare procedural violation, divorced from any concrete harm, 

and satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III.” Id. 

The plaintiff must allege some “concrete interest” that is “de 

facto,” “real,” and “actually exist[s].” See id. at 1548, 1549. 

Accordingly, while a legislature may “‘elevat[e] to the status 

of legally cognizable injuries concrete, de facto injuries that 

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were previously inadequate in law,’” the legislature cannot 

dispense with the constitutional baseline of a concrete injury 

in fact. Spokeo, 136 S. Ct. at 1549 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. 

at 578) (alteration in Spokeo). 

Indeed, the Supreme Court cautioned in Spokeo that some 

statutory violations could “result in no harm,” even if they

involved producing information in a way that violated the 

law. 136 S. Ct. at 1550. The Court elaborated that, in the 

context of the Fair Credit Reporting Act at least: “An 

example that comes readily to mind is an incorrect zip code. 

It is difficult to imagine how the dissemination of an incorrect 

zip code, without more, could work any concrete harm.” Id.

If, as the Supreme Court advised, disclosure of an 

incorrect zip code is not a concrete Article III injury, then 

even less so is Hancock and White’s naked assertion that a zip 

code was requested and recorded without any concrete 

consequence. Hancock and White do not allege, for example, 

any invasion of privacy, increased risk of fraud or identity 

theft, or pecuniary or emotional injury. Cf. Spokeo, 136 S. Ct. 

at 1549 (A “risk of real harm” or an “intangible” harm may 

satisfy Article III’s requirement of concrete injury.). And 

without any plausible allegation of Article III injury, the 

complaint fails to state a basis for federal court jurisdiction. 

Finally, Hancock and White ask this court to change the 

district court’s dismissal from one with prejudice to one 

without prejudice so that they can amend their complaint to 

allege standing. But having failed to request the opportunity 

to amend their complaint in district court, Hancock and White 

are in no position to ask this court to permit amendment in the 

first instance. “When a plaintiff fails to seek leave from the 

District Court to amend its complaint, either before or after its 

complaint is dismissed, it forfeits the right to seek leave to 

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amend on appeal.” City of Harper Woods Employees’ 

Retirement System v. Olver, 589 F.3d 1292, 1304 (D.C. Cir. 

2009). To be sure, Hancock and White included a passing 

reference to amendment in a footnote in their opposition to 

the motion to dismiss. But that does not suffice. See United 

States ex rel. Williams v. Martin-Baker Aircraft Co., 389 F.3d 

1251, 1259 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (“While Federal Rule [of Civil 

Procedure] 15(a) provides that leave to amend shall be freely 

given when justice so requires, a bare request in an opposition 

to a motion to dismiss—without any indication of the 

particular grounds on which amendment is sought—does not 

constitute a motion within the contemplation of Rule 15(a).”). 

In short, Hancock and White are seeking leave to amend from 

the wrong court at the wrong time.

III

Because the plaintiffs have not alleged any concrete 

injury in fact stemming from the alleged violations of D.C. 

law, the district court lacked jurisdiction. We accordingly 

take the only action open to us: we vacate the district court’s 

judgment on the merits and remand with instructions to 

dismiss the complaint.

So ordered.

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