Court Opinion

ID: 9644615
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:00:47.390995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:11:08.083686
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                For the Seventh Circuit
                    ____________________

No. 22-1892
ALP BAYSAL, THOMAS MAXIM, and SANDRA ITALIANO,
                                   Plaintiffs-Appellants,

                               v.

MIDVALE INDEMNITY COMPANY and AMERICAN FAMILY
MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, S.I.,
                                Defendants-Appellees.
                    ____________________

           Appeal from the United States District Court
                for the Western District of Wisconsin.
          No. 21-cv-394-wmc — William M. Conley, Judge.
                    ____________________

   ARGUED JANUARY 12, 2023 — DECIDED AUGUST 22, 2023
                ____________________

   Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and RIPPLE,
Circuit Judges.
    EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Midvale Indemnity and
American Family Mutual (collectively Midvale) created an
“instant quote” feature on their websites. Anyone who sup-
plied basic identifying information could receive a quote for
auto insurance. To simplify this process, each site would auto-
2                                                    No. 22-1892

ﬁll some information, including the number of the applicant’s
driver’s license. Problem: anyone could enter a stranger’s
name and home address, which would lead the form to dis-
close the number of the stranger’s driver’s license. Midvale
discontinued the autoﬁll feature after observing unusual ac-
tivity suggesting misuse, and it notiﬁed people whose infor-
mation had been disclosed improperly. Three people who re-
ceived Midvale’s notice then ﬁled this suit under the Driver’s
Privacy Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2721–25 (DPPA or the
Act), and state negligence law. Plaintiﬀs style themselves as
class representatives, but a class was not certiﬁed, so we treat
this as an individual suit.
    Whether the Act applies at all is questionable. Its principal
rule is directed to state oﬃcials rather than private actors. 18
U.S.C. §2721(a). If an insurer obtains drivers’ information
from a state under §2721(b)(6), then dissemination of that in-
formation is limited by §2721(c). This record does not reveal
how Midvale came by the information. The district court did
not address the merits, because it concluded that the three
plaintiﬀs have not been injured and therefore lack standing to
sue. 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71414 (W.D. Wis. Apr. 19, 2022). The
judge recognized that people injured by leaked or hacked
data can have standing. See Dieﬀenbach v. Barnes & Noble, Inc.,
887 F.3d 826 (7th Cir. 2018); Lewert v. P.F. Chang’s China Bistro,
Inc., 819 F.3d 963 (7th Cir. 2016); Remijas v. Neiman Marcus
Group, LLC, 794 F.3d 688 (7th Cir. 2015). But all of these deci-
sions hold that litigants must show concrete injury traceable
to the disclosure. The district judge concluded that plaintiﬀs
had not done so.
   For example, Remijas holds that the need to pay for a
credit-monitoring service is a form of injury because the cost
No. 22-1892                                                     3

is money out of pocket. Similarly, loss of access to a credit card
for even a few days is an injury. One of our three plaintiﬀs
asserts that she paid for a credit-monitoring service, and an-
other contends that a fraudulent brokerage account was
opened in his name, but the district judge observed that nei-
ther the complaint nor any of the other papers shows how
these events can be traced to the disclosure of drivers’-license
numbers. Social Security numbers can be used to open bro-
kerage accounts, but drivers’-license numbers cannot. Like-
wise with credit cards—and if a driver’s-license number can-
not be used to obtain credit in someone else’s name, what’s
the point of credit monitoring? That step entails expense, but
the expense does not stem from the asserted wrong.
    Plaintiﬀs try to bridge this gap by contending that the dis-
closure caused worry and anxiety, which led to other steps
such as credit monitoring. Yet we have held that worry and
anxiety are not the kind of concrete injury essential to stand-
ing. E.g., Wadsworth v. Kross, Lieberman & Stone, Inc., 12 F.4th
665, 668–69 (7th Cir. 2021); Gunn v. Thrasher, Buschmann &
Voelkel, P.C., 982 F.3d 1069, 1071–72 (7th Cir. 2020). If they
were, almost everyone could litigate about almost anything,
because just about everything anyone does causes some other
people to fret. Imagine someone who asserts: “The disclosure
of my license number made me sad, and to cheer myself up I
ate a chocolate bar.” The price of candy would be money out
of pocket, but eating chocolate is not a normal consequence of
disclosures except through the bridge of worry.
    The cost of a credit-monitoring service is no diﬀerent,
when the disclosed information does not facilitate credit-re-
lated frauds. As the Supreme Court put it in Clapper v. Am-
nesty International USA, 568 U.S. 398, 416 (2013):
4                                                   No. 22-1892

“Respondents’ contention that they have standing because
they incurred certain costs as a reasonable reaction to a risk of
harm is unavailing—because the harm respondents seek to
avoid is not certainly impending. In other words, [people]
cannot manufacture standing merely by inﬂicting harm on
themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm
that is not certainly impending.”
    On appeal, plaintiﬀs stress one possibility that the district
judge did not mention: they say that bogus unemployment-
insurance claims were ﬁled in New York in the names of two
plaintiﬀs. A phony claim could cause injury—having a fraud
attributed to one’s name could aﬀect a credit rating or make
it harder to obtain unemployment compensation following
the real loss of a job. Plaintiﬀs do not contend, however, that
either of these things happened to them.
    Nor do they contend that knowledge of a driver’s-license
number could facilitate such a bogus claim, or indeed that
New York State asked for a claimant’s driving information.
The complaint is silent on these matters, and at oral argument
counsel for the plaintiﬀs conceded that she had never looked
at the application form New York uses for unemployment
beneﬁts and does not know what role, if any, a driver’s-license
number plays. Yet a suit fails for lack of standing unless the
complaint plausibly alleges concrete injury caused by the as-
serted wrong. See, e.g., Department of Education v. Brown, 143
S. Ct. 2343 (2023). This complaint does not do so.
   If a license number could have contributed to an unemploy-
ment-insurance scam under the complaint’s allegations, then
we would need an evidentiary hearing to learn whether it did
contribute, to plaintiﬀs’ detriment (and whether the number
came from Midvale rather than some other source)—for
No. 22-1892                                                     5

standing must be demonstrated as well as alleged. Lujan v.
Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992). But plaintiﬀs’
complaint did not allege any link between drivers’ licenses
and unemployment-compensation applications in New York,
so a hearing is unnecessary. We do not doubt that it is possible
in principle for drivers’-license numbers to play a role in un-
employment insurance, and it may have been prudent for
Midvale to warn plaintiﬀs about this possibility. But a possi-
ble route for a loss does not suﬃce for standing; the complaint
must allege that what is possible actually happened or was
“certainly impending”. That’s Clapper’s main holding.
    Plaintiﬀs’ submission boils down to an assertion that there
might be a connection. Guesswork of that kind is not enough,
however; the injury must be traceable to the asserted wrong
and likely rather than speculative. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61.
Plaintiﬀs’ complaint does not even try to explain how, if at all,
New York uses a driver’s-license number in acting on requests
for unemployment compensation. (What other states may do
is neither here nor there for our plaintiﬀs.) New York State
may have suﬀered a concrete injury when it had to devote re-
sources to ﬁnding and denying false claims (our plaintiﬀs do
not allege that the bogus claims in their names were allowed),
but New York’s loss does not supply a footing for plaintiﬀs’
standing. Only injury to plaintiﬀs counts.
    Perhaps anticipating that we would reach this conclusion,
plaintiﬀs maintain that a violation of the Act is enough by it-
self to establish standing, because Congress provided for an
award of “liquidated damages” when actual damages cannot
be shown. 18 U.S.C. §2724(b)(1). This line of argument,
though, is incompatible with many decisions, including
TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190 (2021); Spokeo, Inc.
6                                                  No. 22-1892

v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016); and Summers v. Earth Island In-
stitute, 555 U.S. 488, 496–97 (2009). See also United States v.
Texas, 143 S. Ct. 1964 (2023) (no standing despite the Court’s
assumption that the defendant had violated a statute).
    Spokeo and TransUnion reject the proposition that Con-
gress can create standing just by requiring payment in the ab-
sence of an injury. These decisions add, however, that courts
must respect a legislative determination that concrete harms
need remedies. The Act does not identify any particular com-
pensable harm (§2724(b)(1) refers to “actual damages” but
does not enumerate them). TransUnion and Spokeo say that, in
this situation, courts should inquire whether what the plain-
tiﬀ asserts as injury has a historical or common-law analog.
    So we ask: Does any state make disclosure of a driver’s-
license number tortious? Not that we can see (and not that
plaintiﬀs have found). Between the invention of the motor car
in the nineteenth century and the adoption of the Act in 1994,
license numbers were freely available from many sources, in-
cluding states’ departments of motor vehicles. Even after the
Act directed states to limit the dissemination of information
about drivers (“limit,” not “forbid”; the Act has a long list of
exceptions in §2721(b)), many businesses—not just insurers
such as Midvale—continued to require it. Auto-rental compa-
nies won’t hand over a car without this information; banks
may seek copies of drivers’ licenses to open accounts; hotels
require them to check in; many hospitals and medical prac-
tices demand them; and the normal way to get onto an air-
plane is to present a driver’s license and step through a metal
detector. Drivers’ licenses often are used as ID for voting, and
a voter’s registration may be linked to the license through the
No. 22-1892                                                      7

motor-voter process. (Section 5 of the National Voter Regis-
tration Act, 52 U.S.C. §20504.)
    Many people thus know the numbers on strangers’ li-
censes. A license number is not viewed as embarrassing (as a
low grade point average or a poor credit score would be) or
private (as medical details are) but as neutral: most adults
have these numbers, which are neither good nor bad. Social
Security numbers are unique personal identiﬁers that can be
used for identity theft, but license numbers change over time
as people move to diﬀerent states or licenses are renewed.
When TransUnion spoke of “reputational harms, disclosure of
private information, and intrusion upon seclusion” (141 S. Ct.
at 2204) as examples of situations in which the common law
often provided redress, the Court had in mind the sort of po-
tentially embarrassing or intimate details we have mentioned.
License numbers are not in that set.
    Since TransUnion was decided, we have classiﬁed many
potential disclosures on one side of the Court’s divide or an-
other. For example, Ewing v. MED-1 Solutions, LLC, 24 F.4th
1146 (7th Cir. 2022), holds that a credit report’s failure to dis-
close the disputed status of a debt amounts to the release of
false information, analogous to the tort of defamation. Cothron
v. White Castle System, Inc., 20 F.4th 1156 (7th Cir. 2021), treats
unlawful collection and disclosure of biometric information
as equivalent to the tort of trespass—while explaining that
some other violations of the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act are
not actionable in federal court because the injury is neither
concrete nor similar to a tort. Persinger v. Southwest Credit Sys-
tems, L.P., 20 F.4th 1184 (7th Cir. 2021), holds that obtaining a
propensity-to-pay score (in a credit report) without a permis-
sible purpose is akin to the crime of wrongfully opening
8                                                    No. 22-1892

someone else’s mail to obtain derogatory information and can
be classed with the tort of wrongful intrusion on seclusion.
But other credit-related events lack common-law analogs and
do not support standing. See, e.g., Pierre v. Midland Credit
Management, Inc., 29 F.4th 934 (7th Cir. 2022) (sending a de-
ceptive debt-collection letter); Wadsworth, 12 F.4th 665 (failing
to provide a debtor with required notice). See also Dinerstein
v. Google, LLC, 73 F.4th 502 (7th Cir. 2023) (disclosure of anon-
ymous medical records is not analogous to any tort); Choice v.
Kohn Law Firm, S.C., No. 21-2288 (7th Cir. Aug. 11, 2023) (same
with contradictory statements about attorneys’ fees).
    Plaintiﬀs have pointed to only one decision after TransUn-
ion in which a court found standing for persons complaining
about a violation of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act: Garey
v. James S. Farrin, P.C., 35 F.4th 917 (4th Cir. 2022). That deci-
sion illustrates the need to be precise when thinking about in-
vasion of privacy. Plaintiﬀs in Garey alleged that the defend-
ants disclosed, not license numbers, but home addresses,
which attorneys then used to send unsolicited ads. As in junk-
fax and robocall cases, the analogous tort is intrusion on se-
clusion. Our plaintiﬀs, by contrast, do not allege that any of
the information that Midvale leaked has had a similar result.
   We have explained why a driver’s-license number is not
potentially embarrassing or an intrusion on seclusion. It is a
neutral fact derived from a public records system, a fact legit-
imately known to many private actors and freely revealed to
banks, insurers, hotels, and others. Plaintiﬀs have not plausi-
bly alleged that Midvale’s disclosure of their numbers caused
them any injury, and the disclosure of a number in common
use by both public and private actors does not correspond to
any tort. It follows that plaintiﬀs lack standing to sue, and
No. 22-1892                                               9

plaintiﬀs who lack standing cannot receive either damages or
an injunction.
                                                  AFFIRMED.
10                                                    No. 22-1892

    RIPPLE, Circuit Judge, dissenting. The panel affirms the dis-
trict court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims for lack of stand-
ing. Because the plaintiffs plausibly alleged injuries in fact
that are fairly traceable to the insurance companies, I respect-
fully dissent.
     The majority opinion commits at least three errors. The
opinion first fails to grapple with the substance of the plain-
tiffs’ complaint and brushes aside the most natural inferences
to be drawn from their allegations. Then, it continues down
our court’s ill-advised march to restructure standing doctrine,
and in particular the concrete-injury analysis for statutory
claims, in ways that move far beyond the Supreme Court’s
guidance. Finally, the opinion fails to address the plaintiffs’
standing to seek injunctive relief.
    I begin with the question of concreteness and statutory
rights under recent Supreme Court precedent. I then turn to
the sufficiency of the pleadings and, finally, to the request for
injunctive relief.
                                 I
                                 A
    The law of standing is rooted in Article III’s case-or-con-
troversy requirement and in the Constitution’s scheme of sep-
arated powers. Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 818–20 (1997);
Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 559–60 (1992). By limit-
ing federal courts to adjudicating legal disputes between par-
ties with genuine stakes in the matter, standing doctrine aims
to prevent the judiciary from straying into open-ended policy
concerns that the Constitution reserves to the executive and
legislative branches of the Government. Lujan, 504 U.S. at
576–78; Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 338 (2016).
No. 22-1892                                                    11

    To enforce the case-or-controversy requirement, the Su-
preme Court has instructed federal courts to apply the famil-
iar three-part test of injury in fact, causation, and redressabil-
ity. See Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 338. The present case centers on the
injury-in-fact requirement and in particular on the require-
ment that an injury be concrete. In Spokeo, the Court explained
that a concrete injury “must be ‘de facto’; that is, it must actu-
ally exist.” Id. at 340. In other words, an injury must be “real”
rather than “abstract.” Id. “‘Concrete’ is not, however, neces-
sarily synonymous with ‘tangible.’” Id. “Various intangible
harms can also be concrete. Chief among them are injuries
with a close relationship to harms traditionally recognized as
providing a basis for lawsuits in American courts.” TransUn-
ion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190, 2204 (2021).
    A difficult and recurring theme in standing jurisprudence
is the significance of congressional action. The Supreme Court
has gone to some lengths to explain what bearing Congress’s
creation of a statutory right and cause of action has on the
standing analysis. Its basic teaching is that Congress may “el-
evat[e] to the status of legally cognizable injuries concrete, de
facto injuries that were previously inadequate in law,” Lujan,
504 U.S. at 578, but it may not “‘enact an injury into exist-
ence,’” TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2205 (quoting Hagy v. Demers
& Adams, 882 F.3d 616, 622 (6th Cir. 2018)). In sum, the Su-
preme Court has told us that the violation of a statutory right
is not always sufficient to establish standing. Spokeo, 578 U.S.
at 341. Rather, when a federal court assesses a plaintiff’s
standing to sue to vindicate a statutory right, it must assure
itself that a concrete injury beyond a bare statutory violation
exists. TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2205.
12                                                    No. 22-1892

    When the violation of a plaintiff’s statutory rights entails
a tangible injury to the plaintiff, the injury is plainly adequate
to confer standing. But when the injury allegedly attending a
statutory violation is intangible, the Supreme Court has told
us, our assessment of concreteness must look to “both history
and the judgment of Congress.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 340. Under
the historical prong, we ask whether the claimed injury has “a
close relationship to harms traditionally recognized as
providing a basis for lawsuits in American courts.” TransUn-
ion, 141 S. Ct. at 2204. The identification of a historical or com-
mon-law analog will be useful to demonstrate the concrete-
ness of the alleged injury, but, as the Court has made clear,
we are not looking for “an exact duplicate.” Id. at 2209. We are
looking, simply, for injuries that are similar in kind, but not
necessarily in degree, to the plaintiff’s alleged injury. Gadelhak
v. AT&T Servs., Inc., 950 F.3d 458, 462 (7th Cir. 2020); Ewing v.
MED-1 Solutions, LLC, 24 F.4th 1146, 1151 (7th Cir. 2022).
    Our assessment of the concreteness of an alleged injury
must also consider the judgment of Congress, which, after all,
enjoys the constitutional authority to define the jurisdiction of
the federal courts and “to create statutory rights and obliga-
tions.” Ewing, 24 F.4th at 1151. As our polity changes and be-
comes more complex, “Congress is well-positioned to identify
intangible harms that meet minimum Article III require-
ments,” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341, and “we must be sensitive to
the articulation of new rights of action that do not have clear
analogs in our common-law tradition,” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 580
(Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judg-
ment). The legislative function, as conceived by our Constitu-
tion, vests in Congress the responsibility and the authority
“‘to define injuries and articulate chains of causation that will
give rise to a case or controversy where none existed before.’”
No. 22-1892                                                                 13

Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 580 (Ken-
nedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment)).
                                      B
    History and congressional judgment both make clear that
the plaintiffs’ alleged statutory injuries are adequately con-
crete to establish Article III standing. The plaintiffs allege a
violation of their rights under the Driver’s Privacy Protection
Act (“DPPA”), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2721–25, which “regulates the dis-
closure of personal information contained in the records of
state motor vehicle departments.” Reno v. Condon, 528 U.S.
141, 143 (2000). Specifically, they claim that, in allowing their
driver’s license numbers to be accessed improperly by
strangers, the insurance companies violated their right not to
have their “personal information[] from a motor vehicle rec-
ord” “disclose[d]” for unauthorized purposes. 18 U.S.C.
§ 2724(a); see also id. § 2722(a) (making it “unlawful for any
person knowingly to obtain or disclose personal information,
from a motor vehicle record, for any use not permitted” by
                1
the statute).

1 The majority opinion suggests that the DPPA may not be applicable here
at all because “[i]ts principal rule is directed to state officials rather than
private actors” and insurance companies are subject to it only to the extent
that they obtained the driver’s license numbers from state agencies. Ma-
jority Op. 2. At this stage, I see no grounds for this speculation on the mer-
its of the plaintiffs’ claims. The majority states that “[t]his record does not
reveal how [the companies] came by the information.” Id. Of course, at the
pleading stage, we are looking at a complaint, not an evidentiary record.
And, indeed, the complaint expressly alleged that the insurance compa-
nies “obtain motor vehicle records directly from state agencies or through
resellers who sell such records.” R.27 ¶ 103. To the extent the companies’
conduct comes within the scope of the DPPA, they can be held liable under
§ 2724(a)’s private right of action, which applies to “[a] person who
14                                                           No. 22-1892

                                     1
    Consider first Congress’s action. In enacting the DPPA,
Congress acted on its legislative judgment that certain disclo-
sures, sales, and uses of personal information in motor vehicle
records were causing serious harms to the American public.
Congress saw a need “to protect the personal privacy and
safety of all American licensed drivers.” 140 Cong. Rec. 7929
(1994) (statement of Rep. Porter Goss). The statute accord-
ingly has “a chief aim of privacy protection” and is “predom-
inantly … a public safety measure.” Senne v. Vill. of Palatine,
695 F.3d 597, 606–07 (7th Cir. 2012) (en banc). The legislative
history reveals that “safety and security concerns associated
with excessive disclosures of personal information held by the
State in motor vehicle records were the primary issue to be
remedied by the legislation.” Id. at 607. As the sponsor of the
bill, Representative Moran, emphasized, with “[a]dvances in
technology,” personal information can be accessed “with the
click of a button,” making it all the “more important that safe-
guards are in place to protect personal information.” Protect-
ing Driver Privacy: Hearing on H.R. 3365 Before the Subcomm. on
Civ. & Const. Rts. of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 1994 WL
                                                                           2
212698 (Feb. 4, 1994) (statement of Rep. James P. Moran).
Made freely available to an individual with malicious intent,

knowingly” engages in conduct that violates the statute. See also § 2725(2)
(“‘person’ means an individual, organization or entity”).
2 Representative Moran further observed that disclosure of personal in-
formation even to relatively harmless recipients like marketers “pre-
sent[s], to some people, an invasion of privacy.” Hearing on H.R. 3365, 1994
WL 212698. He accordingly urged Congress to adopt the legislation to “re-
affirm that privacy is … a basic human right to which every person is en-
titled.” Id.
No. 22-1892                                                   15

an address, phone number, photograph, or driver’s license
number, see § 2725(3), can pose problems for the subject of the
information—problems ranging from simple annoyance and
irritation to serious harms such as stalking, threats, fraud, or
physical violence. Cf. Senne, 695 F.3d at 609 (“The possibilities
for identity theft are obvious.”).
    Recognizing that “open access to” personal information
can be a resource to bad actors, with “grave consequences” to
the subjects of the information, Congress determined that it
was appropriate to impose restrictions on the disclosure and
sale of information contained in motor vehicle records. Id. at
607. Its decision to make persons who flout the substantive
restrictions of the DPPA subject to civil actions by affected in-
dividuals was within its sound discretion to regulate inter-
state commerce. See Condon, 528 U.S. at 148 (“[The] sale or re-
lease [of drivers’ information] into the interstate stream of
business is sufficient to support congressional regulation.”).
In providing a cause of action for such harms, Congress acted
within its powers to “‘define [an] injur[y] and articulate [a]
chain[] of causation that will give rise to a case or controversy
where none existed before.’” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341.
    Congress’s judgment on this matter, in other words, is
highly “‘instructive’” for our consideration of the concrete-
ness of the alleged injury. TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2204 (quot-
ing Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341). We “must afford due respect to
Congress’s decision to impose a statutory prohibition or obli-
gation on a defendant, and to grant a plaintiff a cause of action
to sue over the defendant’s violation of that statutory prohi-
bition or obligation.” Id.
   The majority opinion, however, has little to say about the
place of legislative judgment in the standing analysis. Rather,
16                                                     No. 22-1892

the majority opinion seems to rest on its own impressionistic
surmise about the public character of driver’s license num-
bers, the lack of any expectation of privacy in this infor-
mation, and the general harmlessness of disclosure of this in-
formation. See Majority Op. 5–7. Common everyday experi-
ence casts doubt on these personal impressions. But, accurate
or not, such conclusions are the prerogative and responsibil-
ity of Congress, not a panel of a court of appeals. By failing to
recognize and respect Congress’s legislative authority, we un-
dermine the very purpose of standing law—preserving the
separation of powers—and “effect[] a direct and complete
frustration of Congress’s attempt to regulate commerce in the
manner that it has chosen.” Markakos v. Medicredit, Inc., 997
F.3d 778, 783 (7th Cir. 2021) (Ripple, J., concurring). It is
enough that this injury is real and that, even if it may have
been “previously inadequate in law,” Congress has chosen to
“elevat[e]” it to a “legally cognizable” injury. Lujan, 504 U.S.
at 578; see also Ewing, 24 F.4th at 1151 (“Congress may elevate
de facto injuries that once were thought to be insufficiently in-
jurious to form the basis of a federal lawsuit … .”); Carey v.
James S. Farrin, P.C., 35 F.4th 917, 921 (4th Cir. 2022) (a plaintiff
who identifies a historical or common-law analog for his in-
jury “has standing even if the precise injury would not, absent
the statute, be sufficient for Article III standing purposes”).
                                 2
    Congress’s judgment on this matter does not stand, more-
over, unsupported by history. To the contrary, in enacting the
DPPA cause of action, Congress has authorized us to provide
a remedy for violations of a statutory right that cause intangi-
ble injuries “with a close relationship to harms traditionally
recognized as providing a basis for lawsuits in American
No. 22-1892                                                    17

courts.” TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2204. TransUnion’s examples
of traditional intangible injuries are highly suggestive in this
case: “reputational harms, disclosure of private information,
and intrusion upon seclusion.” Id.
    The common-law analog that immediately comes to mind
in this case is the tort of invasion of privacy. Cf. U.S. Dep’t of
Just. v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749,
763 (1989) (“[B]oth the common law and the literal under-
standings of privacy encompass the individual’s control of in-
formation concerning his or her person.”). A claim for inva-
sion of privacy can proceed under one of four basic theories,
the most relevant of which is unreasonable publicity given to
private life. Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 652A, 652D
(Am. L. Inst. 1977). Under this invasion-of-privacy theory, a
defendant is liable for “g[iving] publicity to a matter concern-
ing the private life of another … if the matter publicized is of
a kind that (a) would be highly offensive to a reasonable per-
son, and (b) is not of legitimate concern to the public.” Id.
§ 652D. The injury recognized by this common-law tort is
analogous to the injury Congress elevated to legally cogniza-
ble status in the DPPA: the unwanted and unauthorized dis-
closure of information that tends to be held privately.
    It may well be that, as a matter of tort law, disclosure of a
driver’s license number would not likely suffice to make out
an invasion-of-privacy claim. But that observation is of no
moment: “[A]n exact duplicate [injury] in American history
and tradition” is not required. TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2204;
see also Persinger v. Southwest Credit Sys., L.P., 20 F.4th 1184,
1192 (7th Cir. 2021) (“Whether Persinger would prevail in a
lawsuit for common law invasion of privacy is irrelevant. It is
enough to say that the harm alleged in her complaint resembles
18                                                    No. 22-1892

the harm associated with intrusion upon seclusion.” (empha-
sis added) (footnote omitted)). Indeed, the Supreme Court
hardly could have been clearer on this point when it recog-
nized as sufficiently concrete an injury that plainly lacked an
essential element of the analog tort. See TransUnion, 141 S. Ct.
at 2209 (“[T]he harm from a misleading statement of this kind
bears a sufficiently close relationship to the harm from a false and
defamatory statement.” (emphases added)). What we must
look for is a “‘close relationship’ in kind, not degree,” to a
common-law analog. Gadelhak, 950 F.3d at 462 (quoting
Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341).
    The unwanted and improper disclosure of personal infor-
mation, such as a driver’s license number, represents an in-
jury that is similar in kind to the tort of invasion of privacy.
As the Supreme Court has recognized, “private” is often a
characterization of degree: “In an organized society, there are
few facts that are not at one time or another divulged to an-
other. Thus the extent of the protection accorded a privacy
right at common law rested in part on the degree of dissemi-
nation of the allegedly private fact … .” Reporters Comm. for
Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. at 763 (footnote omitted). In
providing a cause of action for statutory violations that entail
disclosure of information that sits along the general spectrum
of “private,” Congress has elevated to legally cognizable sta-
tus the kind of harm that “traditionally … provid[ed] a basis
for lawsuits in American courts,” a harm “associated with the
tort of” invasion of privacy. TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2208.
   The majority opinion declines to pursue any analysis
along these lines. Instead, the majority opinion revises the
standard that the Supreme Court has said must guide our in-
quiry: Despite the Court’s admonition not to seek “an exact
No. 22-1892                                                   19

duplicate” to the harm alleged by the plaintiffs, the majority
opinion suggests that the standard, in fact, is just that. In the
majority’s view, the analysis in this case comes down to one
question: “Does any state make disclosure of a driver’s license
number tortious?” Majority Op. 6. As the foregoing discus-
sion makes clear, the operative standard under the Supreme
Court’s case law is not whether state tort law covers the pre-
cise harm underlying the plaintiffs’ statutory claim. Indeed, if
that were the standard, one would be left to wonder what was
left of Congress’s legislative power to define the rights and
remedies to be had in the courts of the United States; Congress
would seem to be left to operate within the strictures of the
pre-statutory common law, unable to move beyond those
boundaries to recognize the new and evolving harms experi-
enced by the American people. Cf. Krakauer v. Dish Network,
L.L.C., 925 F.3d 643, 653–54 (4th Cir. 2019) (explaining that
Spokeo did not endorse a project of “judicial grafting” in which
courts must “import the elements of common law torts, piece
by piece, into any scheme Congress may devise”). The proper
inquiry is, instead, whether “the harm alleged in [the] com-
plaint resembles the harm associated with” a traditionally rec-
ognized basis for suit. Persinger, 20 F.4th at 1192 (emphasis
added).
    Moreover, the majority’s belief that disclosure of driver’s
license numbers is ultimately a trivial matter is misguided.
Logically, it does not follow from the fact that driver’s license
numbers must be disclosed to some businesses, hotels, hospi-
tals, or airport security agencies that individuals are indiffer-
ent to the indiscriminate disclosure of this information or to
its disclosure to actors who deliberately seek it with malicious
intent. A driver’s license number is, in fact, at least moder-
ately sensitive, cf. id. (describing the injury of an “unlawful
20                                                                No. 22-1892

inspection of one’s mail, wallet, or bank account”), and as the
sources quoted in the plaintiffs’ complaint suggest, a driver’s
license number in the wrong hands can cause serious prob-
                                     3
lems for an affected person. It seems that the majority’s real
problem with the plaintiffs’ position is that driver’s license
numbers are not sensitive or private enough to be analogous
to any historical or common-law injury traditionally recog-
nized in American courts. Again, however, that is not our
judgment to make, and it oversteps the instructions of the Su-
preme Court: “[W]hen Spokeo instructs us to analogize to
harms recognized by the common law, we are meant to look

3 The complaint quotes a Forbes article stating: “Hackers harvest license
numbers because they’re a very valuable piece of information. A driver’s
license can be a critical part of a fraudulent, synthetic identity—which go
for about $1200 on the Dark Web. On its own, a forged license can sell for
around $200.” R.27 ¶ 36 (quoting Lee Matthews, Hackers Stole Customers’
License Numbers from Geico in Months-Long Breach, Forbes (Apr. 20, 2021)).
      The complaint also quotes at length from a post on Experian’s
webpage:
        If someone gets your driver’s license number, it is also
        concerning because it’s connected to your vehicle regis-
        tration and insurance policies, as well as records on file
        with the Department of Motor Vehicles, place of employ-
        ment (that keep copy of your driver’s license on file), doc-
        tor’s office, government agencies, and other entities. Hav-
        ing access to that one number can provide an identity
        thief with several pieces of information they want to
        know about you. Next to your Social Security number, your
        driver’s license is one of the most important pieces to keep safe
        from thieves.
Id. ¶ 37 (emphasis added).
No. 22-1892                                                   21

for a ‘close relationship’ in kind, not degree.” Gadelhak, 950
F.3d at 462 (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341).
    A person’s privacy interest in a driver’s license number
may be different in degree, but it is not different in kind, from
the privacy interests historically protected in American law;
the disclosure of this information in violation of statute in-
flicts a harm closely related to the harms traditionally recog-
nized at common law. By imposing a standard of concrete-
ness that is not only more restrictive than, but contrary to, the
guidance given by the Supreme Court, our circuit today ad-
vances its ongoing “invasion into the congressional domain
while continuing to provide no real precedential justification
for doing so.” Markakos, 997 F.3d at 784 (Ripple, J., concur-
ring). In light of controlling Supreme Court precedent, I
would hold that the alleged violations of the DPPA establish
sufficiently concrete injuries to support the plaintiffs’ stand-
ing to sue.
                               II
    The panel’s decision errs in a second, independent way in
its treatment of the tangible injuries alleged to have resulted
from the disclosure of the plaintiffs’ driver’s license numbers.
The plaintiffs plausibly alleged injuries in the form of identity
theft, lost time and effort in working to prevent fraudulent
unemployment-benefits applications, and lost time and effort
in responding to actual fraudulent applications made in their
names, but the majority opinion holds that the complaint did
not plausibly trace these harms to the actions of the insurance
companies. I respectfully disagree.
    At the pleading stage, “the plaintiff must ‘clearly … allege
facts demonstrating’ each element” of standing. Spokeo, 578
22                                                  No. 22-1892

U.S. at 338 (quoting Warth v Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 518 (1975)).
In ruling on a motion to dismiss, “‘the district court must ac-
cept as true all material allegations of the complaint, drawing
all reasonable inferences therefrom in the plaintiff’s favor, un-
less standing is challenged as a factual matter.’” Remijas v.
Neiman Marcus Grp., LLC, 794 F.3d 688, 691 (7th Cir. 2015).
    The plaintiffs plausibly alleged concrete injuries traceable
to the insurance companies’ public disclosure of their driver’s
license numbers. In assessing this aspect of the case, there are
several background allegations that are important to bear in
mind, before we turn to the allegations of specific injuries. The
complaint alleged that, after the insurance companies learned
that their websites were being used improperly to obtain
driver’s license numbers, the companies sent notification let-
ters to the thousands of affected individuals. These letters
stated, in relevant part:
       To the extent you were affected by this incident,
       unauthorized parties may have obtained your
       driver’s license number.
       We have reason to believe this data may be used
       to fraudulently apply for unemployment bene-
       fits in your name. Please carefully review any
       written communications you receive from your
       state’s unemployment agency, especially if you
       have not applied for unemployment benefits. If
       you suspect that your data has been used to
       fraudulently apply for unemployment benefits,
       you should contact the relevant state unemploy-
       ment agency immediately.
       …
No. 22-1892                                                 23

         To help protect you, we are offering you [credit
         monitoring] services free of charge. These ser-
         vices … will provide you with alerts for twelve
         months from the date of enrollment whenever
         changes occur to your Experian credit file.
         …
         If you wish to monitor your own credit report
         for unauthorized activity, you may obtain a
         copy of your credit report, free of charge, once
         every 12 months from each of the three nation-
         wide credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Ex-
         perian, and TransUnion. … Additional infor-
         mation on identity theft protection is also pro-
                                           4
         vided in the enclosed pages … .
Elsewhere in the complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that the
driver’s license numbers were “taken for the purpose of com-
mitting fraud in the name of the person whose license infor-
                    5
mation is taken,” and they provided extensive descriptions
of the risks that attend compromised personal information
                                    6
such as driver’s license numbers.
    Describing the plaintiffs’ specific injuries, the complaint
alleged, as to two plaintiffs, that “[f]ollowing the Unauthor-
ized Data Disclosure,” these plaintiffs “received notice from
the New York State Department of Labor that a claim for un-
employment insurance benefits was filed” using their

4 R.27 ¶¶ 25, 26.

5 Id. ¶ 28.

6 Id. ¶¶ 29–39.
24                                                            No. 22-1892

              7
identities. Both plaintiffs “spent time researching … options
to respond to the theft of [their] driver’s license[s], and the use
of same to commit identity fraud,” and they “spent time con-
tacting the New York State Department of Labor to deal with
the fraudulent application[s] [for] unemployment insurance
              8
benefits.” A third plaintiff, after receiving the insurance com-
panies’ notification letter, “contacted the Florida Reemploy-
ment Assistance Program to notify them that she was a victim
of a data breach and to place a fraud alert to mitigate the un-
authorized application [for] unemployment benefits in her
          9
name.”
   The majority opinion first downplays the plaintiffs’ alle-
gations as merely “contending that the disclosure caused
worry and anxiety,” harms which our circuit has found to be
insufficient to establish a concrete injury. Majority Op. 3; see
Wadsworth v. Kross, Lieberman & Stone, Inc., 12 F.4th 665, 668–
                       10
69 (7th Cir. 2021). But the plaintiffs do not simply rely on

7 Id. ¶¶ 54, 61.

8 Id. ¶¶ 55, 64.

9 Id. ¶ 70.

10 As one of our colleagues has explained elsewhere, however, the Su-
preme Court appears to have “left open the possibility that a plaintiff
could show standing by showing that her knowledge of a serious risk
caused its own emotional or psychological harm.” Pierre v. Midland Credit
Mgmt., Inc., 29 F.4th 934, 946 n.6 (7th Cir. 2022) (Hamilton, J., dissenting).
Specifically, in TransUnion, the Court mentioned the possibility that “a
plaintiff’s knowledge that he or she is exposed to a risk of future physical,
monetary, or reputational harm could cause its own current emotional or
psychological harm,” but it “t[ook] no position on whether or how such an
emotional or psychological harm could suffice for Article III purposes.”
No. 22-1892                                                                  25

worry and anxiety. Two plaintiffs experienced actual identity
theft in the form of fraudulent unemployment-benefits appli-
cations, and they spent time and effort to address and reme-
diate this fraud. We have recognized actual identity theft and
the attendant mitigation efforts as a concrete injury. See Rem-
ijas, 794 F.3d at 692 (“[T]here are identifiable costs associated
with the process of sorting things out [after fraudulent activ-
ity].”); Lewert v. P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, Inc., 819 F.3d 963,
967 (7th Cir. 2016) (“Even if those fraudulent charges did not
result in injury to his wallet (he stated that his bank stopped
the charges before they went through), he spent time and ef-
fort resolving them.”). Moreover, as the plaintiffs point out in
their brief, it is reasonable to infer that they have suffered in-
jury in the form of an impaired ability to access unemploy-
ment benefits due to the presence of fraudulent claims made
in their names in the State’s records. Additionally, the third
plaintiff’s expense of time and effort to take preventive action
with the Florida unemployment agency constitutes a concrete
injury. TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2211 (although the risk of fu-
ture harm is not a concrete injury in a suit for damages, “the
exposure to the risk of future harm” may “itself cause[] a sep-
                            11
arate concrete harm”).

141 S. Ct. at 2211 n.7 (emphasis added). Judge Hamilton detailed several
doctrinal reasons for why, contrary to our circuit’s restrictive approach to
this question, certain emotional and psychological harms should be ade-
quate to support standing. See Pierre, 29 F.4th at 947–50 (Hamilton, J., dis-
senting).
11 See also In re Equifax Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litig., 999 F.3d
1247, 1262–63 (11th Cir. 2021) (describing “actual identity theft” and its
resulting harms, including “time, money, and effort trying to mitigate …
injuries,” as an injury in fact); Hutton v. Nat’l Bd. of Examiners in Optometry,
Inc., 892 F.3d 613, 622 (4th Cir. 2018) (“The Plaintiffs have been concretely
26                                                       No. 22-1892

    The majority opinion nonetheless concludes that, even if
there is some harm related to the fraudulent applications, the
plaintiffs failed to allege in sufficiently explicit terms that
these fraudulent applications could be traced to the insurance
companies’ disclosure of their driver’s license numbers. This
is an unacceptably parsimonious reading of the complaint,
which, under well-established principles governing the as-
sessment of complaints, we must “accept as true,” “drawing
all reasonable inferences” in the plaintiffs’ favor. Remijas, 794
F.3d at 691 (internal quotation marks omitted). “It is certainly
plausible for pleading purposes” that the plaintiffs’ injuries—
identity theft and lost time and effort responding to fraudu-
lent unemployment-benefits applications—“are ‘fairly trace-
able’ to the data breach.” Id. at 696. It is crucial to remember
that the insurance companies themselves warned the affected
individuals that they suspected malicious actors intended to
use their driver’s license numbers to apply for unemployment
benefits and further advised the affected individuals to re-
view communications from their state unemployment agen-
cies and alert those agencies to suspected fraud. The com-
plaint alleged that the driver’s license numbers were “deliber-
ately targeted” for a specific purpose and that, within six
months of the data breach, the anticipated harm materialized
for at least two affected individuals. Id. at 693 (emphasis
added).
   In the majority opinion’s view, the plaintiffs failed to al-
lege specifically that New York’s unemployment agency re-
quires an applicant to provide a driver’s license number. To

injured by the data breach because the fraudsters used—and attempted to
use—the Plaintiffs’ personal information to open Chase Amazon Visa
credit card accounts without their knowledge or approval.”).
No. 22-1892                                                                  27

treat this omission as fatal to the traceability analysis is an ex-
ceedingly narrow manner of reading the complaint. The noti-
fication letters from the insurance companies—reproduced at
length in the complaint—stated that the companies “believe
this data may be used to fraudulently apply for unemploy-
ment benefits” and advised affected individuals to “contact
the relevant state unemployment agency immediately” if the
                                                  12
recipient had any suspicion of fraud. Later, the complaint
repeated the point again, noting that “bad actors” often “us[e]
these driver’s license numbers to fraudulently apply for un-
                              13
employment benefits.” The complaint even referred ex-
pressly to “the use of [the driver’s license] to commit identity
theft” in connection with the unemployment-benefits appli-
                                       14
cation in one plaintiff’s name. These allegations give rise to
the natural inference that it is standard practice for state un-
employment agencies to require driver’s license numbers in
these applications and that New York’s unemployment
                              15
agency likewise did so.

12 R.27 ¶¶ 25, 26.

13 Id. ¶ 38.

14 Id. ¶ 55.

15 The defendants could have challenged the factual accuracy of this point
before the district court. “Where standing is challenged as a factual matter,
the plaintiff bears the burden of supporting the allegations necessary for
standing with ‘competent proof.’” Retired Chicago Police Ass’n v. City of Chi-
cago, 76 F.3d 856, 862 (7th Cir. 1996). In that event, “the district court may
find the facts.” Reid L. v. Ill. State Bd. of Educ., 358 F.3d 511, 515 (7th Cir.
2004).
28                                                    No. 22-1892

   Finally, for good measure, the complaint alleged that none
of the three plaintiffs had “knowingly transmitted unen-
crypted [personal information] over the internet or any other
unsecured source,” strengthening the inference that the unau-
thorized users of the driver’s license numbers obtained that
                                               16
information from the insurance companies.
    It is certainly conceivable that “the plaintiffs may eventu-
ally not be able to provide an adequate factual basis for the
inference[s]” tracing their injuries to the insurance compa-
nies’ disclosures, “but they had no such burden at the plead-
ing stage.” Id. at 694. The “admissions and actions by” the in-
surance companies, coupled with the actual materialization of
the specific risk that the companies anticipated, “adequately
raise the plaintiffs’ right to relief above the speculative level.”
Id. at 696 (citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570
(2007)). Under the well-established rules governing pleading,
the plaintiffs have alleged plausibly concrete injuries in the
form of identity theft and lost time and effort to mitigate iden-
tity theft and that these injuries are fairly traceable to the in-
surance companies.
                                III
     A word remains to be said about the plaintiffs’ standing to
seek injunctive relief, which the majority opinion does not ad-
dress. Presumably, the majority thinks the plaintiffs lack
standing for this form of relief for two reasons: (a) the major-
ity does not believe the unauthorized disclosure of the plain-
tiffs’ driver’s license numbers constitutes an injury or poses a
sufficient risk of future injury, and (b) the majority does not

16 Id. ¶¶ 57, 66, 72.
No. 22-1892                                                      29

think the plaintiffs have traced any actual or potential injury
to the insurance companies. For substantially the same rea-
sons that I have already given, I believe the majority is mis-
taken on each point. In fact, the plaintiffs’ allegations in sup-
port of standing for injunctive relief are likely even stronger
than for purposes of seeking damages. As TransUnion ex-
plained, “a person exposed to a risk of future harm may pur-
sue forward-looking, injunctive relief to prevent the harm
from occurring, at least so long as the risk of harm is suffi-
ciently imminent and substantial.” 141 S. Ct. at 2210 (citing
Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 414 n.5 (2013)). At
the very least, the plaintiffs have plausibly alleged future in-
juries of unemployment-benefits fraud (with its related
harms) resulting from the insurance companies’ failure to
protect their driver’s license numbers. For purposes of these
future injuries, it was sufficient for the plaintiffs to allege that
a driver’s license number may be used by a fraudulent actor
to obtain unemployment benefits from state unemployment
agencies, that several fraudulent actors have indeed sought
this information and attempted to use it for that purpose, and
that the insurance companies failed to secure the plaintiffs’
information and continue to fail to take adequate measures to
secure it in the future. See, e.g., Remijas, 794 F.3d at 692–94. Ac-
cordingly, I would hold that the plaintiffs have standing to
pursue injunctive relief.
                           Conclusion
    Because I believe the plaintiffs’ allegations are adequate to
support standing for their requests for damages and injunc-
tive relief, I would reverse the judgment of the district court
and remand for further proceedings. I respectfully dissent.