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18 

TRANSUNION LLC v. RAMIREZ 

Opinion of the Court 

2 
The remaining 6,332 class members are a different story.
To  be  sure,  their  credit  files,  which  were  maintained  by
TransUnion,  contained  misleading  OFAC  alerts.  But  the 
parties  stipulated  that  TransUnion  did  not  provide  those
plaintiffs’ credit information to any potential creditors dur-
ing the class period from January 2011 to July 2011.  Given 
the absence of dissemination, we must determine whether 
the 6,332 class members suffered some other concrete harm 
for purposes of Article III.

The  initial  question  is  whether  the  mere  existence  of  a 
misleading OFAC alert in a consumer’s internal credit file
at  TransUnion  constitutes  a  concrete  injury.    As  Judge
Tatel  phrased  it  in  a  similar  context,  “if  inaccurate  infor-
mation falls into” a consumer’s credit file, “does it make a 
sound?”  Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn., Inc. v. 
United States Dept. of Transp., 879 F. 3d 339, 344 (CADC 
2018).

Writing the opinion for the D. C. Circuit in Owner-Oper-
ator, Judge Tatel answered no.  Publication is “essential to 
liability”  in  a  suit  for  defamation.  Restatement  of  Torts 
§577,  Comment  a,  at  192.  And  there  is  “no  historical  or 
common-law analog where the mere existence of inaccurate 
information, absent dissemination, amounts to concrete in-
jury.”  Owner-Operator, 879 F. 3d, at 344–345.  “Since the 
basis of the action for words was the loss of credit or fame, 
and not the insult, it was always necessary to show a pub-
lication of the words.”  J. Baker, An Introduction to English 
Legal History 474 (5th ed. 2019).  Other Courts of Appeals
have similarly recognized that, as Judge Colloton summa-
rized, the “retention of information lawfully obtained, with-
out  further  disclosure,  traditionally  has  not  provided  the 
basis for a lawsuit in American courts,” meaning that the 
mere  existence  of  inaccurate  information  in  a  database  is 
insufficient  to  confer  Article  III  standing.  Braitberg  v. 
Charter  Communications,  Inc.,  836  F. 3d  925,  930  (CA8