Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-297_4g25.pdf
Page Number: 26.0

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TRANSUNION LLC v. RAMIREZ 

Opinion of the Court 

generally  presumed  to  cause  a  harm,  albeit  not  a  readily
quantifiable harm.  As Spokeo noted, “the law has long per-
mitted recovery by certain tort victims even if their harms 
may be difficult to prove or measure.”  578 U. S., at 341 (em-
phasis added).  But there is a significant difference between
(i) an actual harm that has occurred but is not readily quan-
tifiable,  as  in  cases  of  libel  and  slander  per se,  and  (ii)  a 
mere risk of future harm.  By citing libel and slander per se, 
Spokeo did not hold that the mere risk of future harm, with-
out more, suffices to demonstrate Article III standing in a 
suit for damages.

Here,  the  6,332  plaintiffs  did  not  demonstrate  that  the
risk of future harm materialized—that is, that the inaccu-
rate OFAC alerts in their internal TransUnion credit files 
were  ever  provided  to  third  parties  or  caused  a  denial  of 
credit.  Nor  did  those  plaintiffs  present  evidence  that  the
class members were independently harmed by their expo-
sure to the risk itself—that is, that they suffered some other 
injury (such as an emotional injury) from the mere risk that 
their credit reports would be provided to third-party busi-
nesses.  Therefore, the 6,332 plaintiffs’ argument for stand-
ing for their damages claims based on an asserted risk of
future harm is unavailing.

Even apart from that fundamental problem with their ar-
gument based on the risk of future harm, the plaintiffs did 
not  factually  establish  a  sufficient  risk  of  future  harm  to 
support Article III standing.  As Judge McKeown explained 
in her dissent, the risk of future harm that the 6,332 plain-
tiffs identified—the risk of dissemination to third parties—
was  too  speculative  to  support  Article  III  standing.    951 
F. 3d  1008,  1040  (2020);  see  Whitmore  v.  Arkansas,  495 
U. S. 149, 157 (1990).  The plaintiffs claimed that TransUn-
ion could have divulged their misleading credit information
to a third party at any moment.  But the plaintiffs did not
demonstrate  a  sufficient  likelihood  that  their  individual