Court Opinion

ID: 9410846
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-24 19:01:09.580918+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:00.384658
License: Public Domain

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                                                                [PUBLISH]
                                      In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                          For the Eleventh Circuit

                            ____________________

                                   No. 21-10199
                            ____________________

        SUSAN DRAZEN,
        on behalf of herself and other persons similarly situated,
                                                         Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
        Godaddy.com, LLC,
        a Delaware Limited Liability Company,
                                                      Defendant-Appellee,
        versus
        MR. JUAN ENRIQUE PINTO,

                                                        Movant-Appellant.

                            ____________________
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        2                          Opinion of the Court                       21-10199

                    Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Southern District of Alabama
                       D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-00563-KD-B
                             ____________________

        Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, WILSON, JORDAN,
        ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, BRANCH, GRANT, LUCK,
        BRASHER, ABUDU and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges. ∗
        ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, delivered the opinion for the unani-
        mous Court.
        JORDAN, Circuit Judge, and NEWSOM, Circuit Judge, ﬁled a concur-
        ring opinion.
        BRANCH, Circuit Judge, ﬁled a concurring opinion.
        ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge:
                A case is not a “Case[]” (or a “Controvers[y]) if the plaintiff
        lacks standing. And we can’t hear matters that aren’t “Cases” or
        “Controversies.” Under Article III of the Constitution, we lack ju-
        risdiction over them.
              So to evaluate our jurisdiction, today’s case requires us to
        determine whether a person who receives an unwanted, auto-
        mated telemarketing text message has standing to sue the sender.
        To establish standing, a plaintiff must show that she has suffered an

        ∗ Senior Circuit Judge Tjoflat elected to participate in this decision, pursuant
        to 28 U.S.C. § 46(c). Judge Lagoa did not participate in this decision, as she is
        recused.
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        21-10199               Opinion of the Court                         3

        injury in fact, which the defendant likely caused and which a favor-
        able decision can likely redress. This case zooms in on standing’s
        injury-in-fact component—a requirement that demands, among
        other things, that a plaintiff’s injury be concrete. The concreteness
        requirement ensures that the plaintiff has a real stake in the litiga-
        tion. Only when a plaintiff has that concrete stake in the lawsuit
        can she bring her claim in federal court.
                Obvious concrete harms include physical injury and finan-
        cial loss. But intangible harms—an invasion of privacy, for exam-
        ple—may also satisfy the concreteness requirement. Because Con-
        gress is well-suited to identify such harms, we find Congress’s judg-
        ment instructive when it creates a cause of action for an intangible
        harm. But Congress’s judgment is not necessarily dispositive.
        Once Congress identifies a harm by enacting a statute with a cause
        of action to redress that harm, we consider whether the statutory
        harm shares a “close relationship” with a harm that has tradition-
        ally provided a basis for a lawsuit in English or American courts. If
        it does, then the plaintiff’s alleged intangible harm satisfies stand-
        ing’s concreteness requirement.
               The question at the core of this appeal is whether the plain-
        tiffs who received a single unwanted, illegal telemarketing text
        message suffered a concrete injury. To answer that question, we
        consider whether the harm from receiving such a text message
        shares a close relationship with a traditional harm. The plaintiffs
        contend that it does—namely, with the harm that underlies a
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        4                        Opinion of the Court                    21-10199

        lawsuit for the common-law claim of intrusion upon seclusion. We
        agree.
               Both harms reflect an intrusion into the peace and quiet in a
        realm that is private and personal. A plaintiff who receives an un-
        wanted, illegal text message suffers a concrete injury. Because Dra-
        zen has endured a concrete injury, we remand this matter to the
        panel to consider the rest of the appeal.
                                             I.
               A. District Court Proceedings
               In August 2019, Suzan Drazen ﬁled a class action against Go-
        Daddy. The putative class alleged that the web-hosting company
        embarked on an unlawful telemarketing campaign. According to
        the complaint, for about two years, between November 2014 and
        December 2016, GoDaddy used a prohibited automatic telephone
        dialing system1 (“ATDS”) “to make promotional calls and text mes-
        sages attempting to sell additional or more expensive services and
        products and/or to contact individuals who are no longer custom-
        ers.” In other words, the complaint asserted that GoDaddy vio-
        lated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (“TCPA”).
        See 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii).

        1An “automatic telephone dialing system” refers to equipment with the ca-
        pacity “to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random
        or sequential number generator;” and the capacity “to dial such numbers.”47
        U.S.C. § 227(a)(1).
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        21-10199               Opinion of the Court                          5

               Meanwhile, Jason Bennett was litigating the same claim in
        the District of Arizona. See Bennett v. GoDaddy.Com, LLC, Case No.
        2:16-cv-03908 (D. Ariz. 2016). And John Herrick ﬁled a third case
        in the District of Arizona. See Herrick v. GoDaddy.com, LLC, Case
        No. 2:16-cv-00254 (D. Ariz. 2016).
               The district court in Drazen’s case eventually consolidated
        her case with Bennett’s. And after Drazen and Bennett eventually
        reached a settlement agreement with GoDaddy, Herrick’s case was
        “incorporated into and resolved by” the same settlement agree-
        ment.
               Then, in January 2020, Drazen ﬁled an unopposed motion
        for preliminary approval of that agreement. The settlement agree-
        ment deﬁned the class to include “all persons within the United
        States who received a call or text message to his or her cellular
        phone from” GoDaddy between November 2014 and December
        2016.
               In response to this motion, the district court issued a sua
        sponte order “to examine its own jurisdiction.” In that order, the
        court cited our decision in Salcedo v. Hanna, 936 F.3d 1162 (11th Cir.
        2019), which held that the “receipt of a single text message” is not
        a concrete injury. Id. at 1172. Because the parties’ settlement de-
        ﬁned the class to include people who received only one text mes-
        sage, the district court ordered the parties to brief “how this case is
        distinguishable from Salcedo v. Hanna.”
               In their brieﬁng, the parties proposed the following class def-
        inition, subject to certain exclusions that are not relevant here:
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        6                       Opinion of the Court                  21-10199

               All persons within the United States to whom, from
               November 4, 2014[,] through December 31, 2016, De-
               fendant placed a voice or text message call to their cel-
               lular telephone pursuant to an outbound campaign
               facilitated by the web-based software application used
               by 3Seventy, Inc., or the software programs and plat-
               forms that comprise the Cisco Uniﬁed Communica-
               tions Manager.
        GoDaddy determined that this “proposed settlement class includes
        approximately 1.26 million individuals.” And according to Go-
        Daddy, of that group, about 7% received only one text message.
        The balance of the class received either one phone call or some
        combination of phone calls and text messages. As for the remedy
        for class members, the proposed settlement agreement oﬀered “the
        choice between a $150 Voucher or a $35 cash award.”
               Upon considering the parties’ brieﬁng, the district court con-
        cluded that only the named plaintiﬀs must have standing. And be-
        cause Herrick received only one text, the district court determined,
        based on Salcedo, that he was disqualiﬁed from being a named
        plaintiﬀ. As for the roughly 91,000 other class members who also
        received only one text and therefore lacked a viable claim in this
        Circuit under Salcedo, the district court noted that “this is a nation-
        wide settlement” and opined that those class members “do have a
        viable claim in their respective Circuit.” For that reason, the district
        court reasoned that GoDaddy could “settle those claims in this
        class action” even though those litigants’ claims were “meritless” in
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        21-10199                   Opinion of the Court                                 7

        this Circuit. 2 And if the parties agreed to remove Herrick as a class
        representative, the district court said, it would approve the pro-
        posed settlement agreement.
               Class counsel then moved for $10,500,000 in fees—equal to
        30% of the total $35 million settlement funds—and $105,410.51 in
        costs. The district court approved a fee award of $8,500,000, as well
        as an award of costs. Beyond that, the court awarded $5,000 each
        to Drazen, Bennett, and Herrick.
               Objector-Appellant Juan Enrique Pinto then ﬁled an objec-
        tion and moved to reconsider the fee award. He made two argu-
        ments. First, he objected that the district court awarded fees to
        class counsel twenty days before the court’s purported objection
        deadline. Second, he claimed that the parties’ settlement was a
        “coupon settlement” under 28 U.S.C. § 1712(e) of the Class Action
        Fairness Act because GoDaddy class members could select Go-
        Daddy vouchers as their recompense. 3 The upshot of Pinto’s

        2 We disagree.   To begin, it’s a misnomer to describe a litigant’s claim as “mer-
        itless” because she lacks standing under our precedent. On the contrary, a
        dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction does not bar the plaintiff from
        pressing that same claim in another court where subject-matter jurisdiction
        exists. See Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 20(1)(a) (Am. L. Inst. 1982).
        In addition, it’s worth emphasizing that district courts in this Circuit must ap-
        ply our caselaw when addressing issues of federal law. See, e.g., McGinley v.
        Houston, 361 F.3d 1328, 1331 (11th Cir. 2004). In any case, our ruling today
        moots this issue.
        3 See 28 U.S.C. § 1712(a) (“If a proposed settlement in a class action provides
        for a recovery of coupons to a class member, the portion of any attorney's fee
        award to class counsel that is attributable to the award of the coupons shall be
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        8                         Opinion of the Court                       21-10199

        argument that the GoDaddy vouchers are subject to the Class Ac-
        tion Fairness Act is that, if he’s right, a more complicated, and less
        lucrative, method of computing class counsel’s award would apply.
        See id. § 1712(a), (e).
               Addressing Pinto’s ﬁrst argument—that the district court
        prematurely awarded fees—the district court amended its order on
        fees “to correct and clarify that any assessment of attorneys’ fees
        and costs were preliminary and subject to ﬁnal review at the ﬁnal
        approval hearing.” And as it turned out, after that hearing, the
        court reconsidered its preliminary fee award and instead approved
        “attorneys’ fees totaling 20% of the Settlement Fund, $7,000,000.”
        The court then overruled Pinto’s objections and approved the set-
        tlement agreement. In overruling Pinto’s objections, the court said
        that “Pinto correctly points out that the ‘Eleventh Circuit has yet
        to weigh in on what it deems a coupon’ and ‘coupon’ is also not
        deﬁned by CAFA.” But ultimately, the court held that the settle-
        ment agreement did not involve “a coupon settlement as contem-
        plated by CAFA.”

        based on the value to class members of the coupons that are redeemed.”); id. §
        1712(e) (“In a proposed settlement under which class members would be
        awarded coupons, the court may approve the proposed settlement only after
        a hearing to determine whether, and making a written finding that, the settle-
        ment is fair, reasonable, and adequate for class members. The court, in its dis-
        cretion, may also require that a proposed settlement agreement provide for
        the distribution of a portion of the value of unclaimed coupons to 1 or more
        charitable or governmental organizations, as agreed to by the parties. The dis-
        tribution and redemption of any proceeds under this subsection shall not be
        used to calculate attorneys’ fees under this section.”).
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        21-10199                  Opinion of the Court                                9

               B. Circuit Court Proceedings
                Pinto then appealed, focusing solely on CAFA issues and the
        district court’s approval of the class settlement. But the panel of
        this Court that was assigned the appeal did not address those argu-
        ments.
               Rather, the panel dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.
        In the process, it noted the Supreme Court’s admonition: “‘Every
        class member must have Article III standing in order to recover in-
        dividual damages.’” Drazen v. Pinto, 41 F.4th 1354, 1360 (11th Cir.
        2022) (quoting TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190, 2204–05,
        2208 (2021)). Then, citing Salcedo, the panel held “that the class
        deﬁnition does not meet Article III standing requirements.” Id. at
        1359. As the panel explained, under Salcedo, “a single unwanted
        text message is not suﬃcient to meet the concrete injury require-
        ment for standing.” Id. at 1362. “So,” the panel concluded, “the
        class deﬁnition cannot stand to the extent that it allows standing for
        individuals who received a single text message from GoDaddy.” Id.
        As a result, the panel “vacate[d] the District Court’s decision to
        grant ﬁnal approval of the settlement and remand[ed] to give the
        parties an opportunity to revise the class deﬁnition.” Id. at 1359. 4
               Plaintiﬀ-Appellant Drazen then moved for rehearing en
        banc, urging us “to reevaluate the Salcedo holding and to clarify the

        4 The panel declined to decide “whether a single cellphone call is sufficient to
        meet the concrete injury requirement” and instead instructed the parties to
        “redefine the class with the benefit of TransUnion and its common-law ana-
        logue analysis” on remand. Id. at 1363.
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         10                     Opinion of the Court                  21-10199

         law regarding the elements necessary to pursue a TCPA claim.”
         We granted that motion.
                                           II.
               We review de novo the threshold jurisdictional question of
         whether the plaintiﬀs enjoy standing to sue. Muransky v. Godiva
         Chocolatier, Inc., 979 F.3d 917, 923 (11th Cir. 2020) (en banc).
                                          III.
                 Article III of the Constitution limits federal courts to decid-
         ing “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. Const. art III, § 2. That “lim-
         itation ‘is founded in concern about the proper—and properly lim-
         ited—role of the courts in a democratic society.’” Summers v. Earth
         Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 492–93 (2009) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422
         U.S. 490, 498 (1975)). “The doctrine of standing is one of several
         doctrines that reﬂect this fundamental limitation.” Id. at 493.
                 To enjoy standing, a plaintiﬀ must satisfy three require-
         ments. First, a plaintiﬀ must establish that she suﬀered an injury in
         fact “that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent.”
         TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2203. Second, she must show that the de-
         fendant “likely caused” her injury. Id. And third, she must show
         that a favorable judicial decision can likely redress her injury. Id.
                This case hinges on the concreteness requirement. “An in-
         jury is concrete if it actually exists—that is, if it is ‘real, and not
         abstract.’” Hunstein v. Preferred Collection & Mgmt. Servs., Inc., 48
         F.4th 1236, 1242 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (quoting Spokeo, Inc. v.
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         21-10199                Opinion of the Court                         11

         Robbins, 578 U.S. 330, 340 (2016)). “The most obvious concrete
         harm is a physical injury or ﬁnancial loss.” Id. at 1243.
                  But intangible harms can satisfy Article III’s concreteness re-
         quirement, too. Id. “Congress is ‘well positioned to identify’ those
         intangible harms.” Id. (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341). So when
         Congress identiﬁes an intangible harm by enacting a law with a
         cause of action to redress that harm, “we ﬁnd its judgment ‘instruc-
         tive and important.’” Ibid. Yet at the same time, Congress “may
         not simply enact an injury into existence.” Id. Nor can Congress
         use “‘its lawmaking power to transform something that is not re-
         motely harmful into something that is.’” Id. (quoting TransUnion,
         141 S. Ct. at 2205). “So congressional judgment, though instruc-
         tive, is not enough.” Id.
                At bottom, standing “is a doctrine rooted in the traditional
         understanding of a case or controversy.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 338.
         So once Congress has identiﬁed an intangible harm, the question
         becomes whether that “‘harm has a close relationship to a harm
         that has traditionally been regarded as providing a basis for a law-
         suit in English or American courts.’” Hunstein, 48 F.4th at 1243
         (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341).
                 The Supreme Court has acknowledged the harm associated
         with the common-law tort of intrusion upon seclusion as an exam-
         ple of a harm “traditionally recognized as providing a basis for law-
         suits in American courts.” TransUnion, 141 S. Ct. at 2204. And Dra-
         zen and Pinto contend that the class members who received only
         one unwanted text message from GoDaddy suﬀered a privacy
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         12                         Opinion of the Court                         21-10199

         invasion that shares a close relationship with the harm associated
         with intrusion upon seclusion. In particular, the complaint alleges
         that the class members “suﬀered an invasion of a legally protected
         interest in privacy, which is speciﬁcally addressed and protected by
         the TCPA.” 5
                 GoDaddy responds that the harm from receiving one un-
         wanted text message lacks a close relationship to the harm under-
         lying intrusion upon seclusion because an element of that com-
         mon-law tort requires that the privacy invasion “be highly oﬀensive
         to a reasonable person.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652B
         (Am. L. Inst. 1965); see also W. Page Keeton et al., Prosser & Keeton
         on the Law of Torts 855 (5th ed. 1984). And a single unwanted, illegal
         text message is not. Calling someone two or three times, for exam-
         ple, is insuﬃciently oﬀensive to state a claim under the common-
         law tort; “only when the telephone calls are repeated with such per-
         sistency and frequency as to amount to a course of hounding the
         plaintiﬀ” does the intrusion rise to the degree of oﬀensiveness that
         the common law requires. Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, §
         652B cmt. d. Because receiving one text message falls short of that

         5  GoDaddy contends that Congress has been silent on 47 U.S.C. §
         227(b)(1)(a)(iii)’s applicability to text messages. For the purposes of assessing
         our jurisdiction and without deciding the merits of the TCPA claim, we disa-
         gree and conclude that Congress appears to have targeted unwanted text mes-
         sages (as well as unwanted phone messages) with the TCPA. See Cranor v. 5
         Star Nutrition, L.L.C., 988 F.3d 686, 690–91 (5th Cir. 2021); see also, e.g., Camp-
         bell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. 153, 156 (2016) (“A text message to a cellular
         phone, it is undisputed, qualifies as a ‘call’ within the compass of §
         227(b)(1)(A)(iii).”).
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         21-10199               Opinion of the Court                         13

         degree of harm, see Salcedo, 936 F.3d at 1171, GoDaddy contends
         that the class members who received only one text message did not
         suﬀer an injury that has a close relationship to the injury associated
         with intrusion upon seclusion.
                We disagree.
                 To be sure, the relationship between the harms we compare
         is too attenuated when a plaintiﬀ “completely fails to allege an ele-
         ment essential to the harm set out as a common-law comparator.”
         Hunstein, 48 F.4th at 1249. But because the concreteness inquiry
         centers on whether the harms share “a close relationship,” we do
         not require carbon copies; the new harm need only be “similar to”
         the old harm. Id. at 1242 (citations omitted); see also TransUnion,
         141 S. Ct. at 2209 (“In looking to whether a plaintiﬀ’s asserted harm
         has a ‘close relationship’ to a harm traditionally recognized as
         providing a basis for lawsuit in American courts, we do not require
         an exact duplicate.”).
                 To ﬁnd the sweet spot between similar yet not identical,
         now-Justice Barrett has said that we should ask whether the harms
         share “a ‘close relationship’ in kind, not degree.” Gadelhak v. AT&T
         Servs., Inc., 950 F.3d 458, 462 (7th Cir. 2020) (Barrett, J.) (quoting
         Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341), cited with approval in TransUnion, 141 S. Ct.
         at 2204; see also Hunstein, 48 F.4th at 1267 (Newsom, J., dissenting)
         (ﬁnding it “hard to imagine a circumstance in which a plaintiﬀ’s
         harm is similar in both ‘kind’ and ‘degree’ to a common-law tort
         and yet is not precisely the same”).
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         14                      Opinion of the Court                   21-10199

                 That approach has become popular among our sister Cir-
         cuits. Just as the Seventh Circuit focuses on kind but not degree,
         the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits look to the
         “types of harms protected at common law, not the precise point at
         which those harms become actionable.” Krakauer v. Dish Network,
         LLC, 925 F.3d 643, 654 (4th Cir. 2019); accord Perez v. McCreary,
         Veselka, Bra & Allen, P.C., 45 F.4th 816, 822 (5th Cir. 2022); Ward v.
         NPAS, Inc., 63 F.4th 576, 580–81 (6th Cir. 2023); Robins v. Spokeo, Inc.,
         867 F.3d 1108, 1115 (9th Cir. 2017); Lupia v. Medicredit, Inc., 8 F.4th
         1184, 1192 (10th Cir. 2021). The Second and Third Circuits simi-
         larly focus on the “character” of the new and old harms when de-
         termining whether the relationship is suﬃciently close. See Melito
         v. Experian Mktg. Sols., Inc., 923 F.3d 85, 93 (2d Cir. 2019); Thorne v.
         Pep Boys Manny Moe & Jack, Inc., 980 F.3d 879, 890 (3d Cir. 2020)
         (citation omitted).
                 Following this approach, seven of our sister Circuits have de-
         clined to consider the degree of oﬀensiveness required to state a
         claim for intrusion upon seclusion at common law. Instead, they
         have held that receiving either one or two unwanted texts or phone
         calls resembles the kind of harm associated with intrusion upon se-
         clusion. See Gadelhak, 950 F.3d at 463 & n.2 (one unwanted text
         message); Melito, 923 F.3d at 93 (same); Van Patten v. Vertical Fitness
         Grp., LLC, 847 F.3d 1037, 1042–43 (9th Cir. 2017) (two unwanted
         text messages); Susinno v. Work Out World Inc., 862 F.3d 346, 351–52
         (3d Cir. 2017) (one unwanted phone call); Ward, 63 F.4th at 581
         (same); Lupia, 8 F.4th at 1192 (same); Krakauer, 925 F.3d at 652–653
         (two unwanted phone calls in one year). In fact, even we have held
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         21-10199               Opinion of the Court                         15

         that receiving “more than one unwanted telemarketing call” causes
         a harm that bears “a close relationship to the kind of harm” that
         intrusion upon seclusion inﬂicts. Cordoba v. DIRECTV, LLC, 942 F.3d
         1259, 1270 (11th Cir. 2019).
                 We think that asking whether the harms are similar in kind
         but not degree makes sense. Indeed, “Congress may ‘elevate to the
         status of legally cognizable injuries concrete, de facto injuries that
         were previously inadequate in law.’” Hunstein, 48 F.4th at 1243
         (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341). And Congress’s power to elevate
         harms to the status of legally cognizable injuries “implies that the
         level of harm required at common law ‘does not stake out the lim-
         its of [its] power to identify harms deserving a remedy.’” Perez, 45
         F.4th at 822 (alteration in original) (quoting Gadelhak, 950 F.3d at
         463); see also, e.g., Ward, 63 F.4th at 581; Hunstein, 48 F.4th at 1256
         (Pryor, C.J., concurring) (“Congress need not condition providing
         a remedy for reputational harm on the degree of oﬀensiveness the
         common law required.”).
                Asking whether the harms are similar in kind also accords
         with our recent en banc decision in Hunstein. There, the plaintiﬀ’s
         alleged injury occurred when a creditor mailed personal infor-
         mation about his debt to a mail vendor. Id. at 1240. That injury, he
         argued, shared a close relationship to the harm suﬀered from the
         tort of public disclosure. Id. But an essential element of that tort
         is publicity, which entails the public disclosure of private infor-
         mation “‘by communicating it to the public at large,’” id. at 1246
         (quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, § 652D cmt. a). We
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         16                      Opinion of the Court                  21-10199

         held that the debt-collector’s disclosure of information about the
         plaintiﬀ’s debt to the mail vendor “lack[ed] the fundamental ele-
         ment of publicity.” Id. at 1245. In reaching this conclusion, we rea-
         soned that the element of publicity either exists or it does not; there
         is no in-between. See id. at 1249 (explaining that “we cannot ana-
         lyze the degree” of publicity because “the diﬀerence between pub-
         lic and private is qualitative, not quantitative.”). So the element of
         publicity was “completely missing.” Id. at 1245. And we said that
         the plaintiﬀ’s alleged harm was not just “smaller in degree” than
         the common-law comparator—it was “entirely absent.” Id. at 1249.
                 Here, by contrast, none of the elements for the common-
         law comparator tort are completely missing. Intrusion upon seclu-
         sion consists of an (i) intentional intrusion (ii) into another’s soli-
         tude or seclusion, (iii) which would be highly oﬀensive to a reason-
         able person. Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, § 652B; see also,
         e.g., Jackman v. Cebrink-Swartz, 334 So. 3d 653, 656 (Fla. Dist. Ct.
         App. 2021). Unwanted phone calls, as we’ve noted, are among the
         privacy intrusions that give rise to liability for intrusion upon seclu-
         sion. See Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, § 652B cmt. d;
         Keeton et al., supra, at 855. And as with “the unwanted ringing of
         a phone from a phone call,” the “undesired buzzing of a cell phone
         from a text message . . . is an intrusion into peace and quiet in a
         realm that is private and personal.” Gadelhak, 950 F.3d at 462 n.1.
               To be sure, a single unwanted text message may not “be
         highly oﬀensive to the ordinary reasonable man.” Restatement
         (Second) of Torts, supra, § 652B cmt. d. Yet an unwanted text
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         21-10199               Opinion of the Court                        17

         message is nonetheless oﬀensive to some degree to a reasonable
         person. Even GoDaddy conceded at oral argument that receiving
         one unwanted text message each day for thirty days would be
         enough to satisfy the oﬀensiveness element. Oral Argument at
         27:45–28:05; see also Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, § 652B
         illus. 5.
               And that concession is the whole ballgame. After all, the ar-
         gument that thirty unwanted text messages in thirty days are
         enough but one is not is an argument of degree, not kind. If thirty
         are enough, then are twenty-nine? Are twenty-eight? How about
         two? Drawing the line necessarily requires us to make a choice of
         degree.
                But the Constitution empowers Congress to decide what de-
         gree of harm is enough so long as that harm is similar in kind to a
         traditional harm. And that’s exactly what Congress did in the
         TCPA when it provided a cause of action to redress the harm that
         unwanted telemarketing texts and phone calls cause. See 47 U.S.C.
         § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii). As our colleagues in the Third Circuit have rec-
         ognized, “Congress was not inventing a new theory of injury when
         it enacted the TCPA.” Susinno, 862 F.3d at 352. Rather, “Congress
         identiﬁed a modern relative of a harm with long common law
         roots.” Gadelhak, 950 F.3d at 462.
                In sum, then, we hold that the harm associated with an un-
         wanted text message shares a close relationship with the harm un-
         derlying the tort of intrusion upon seclusion. Both harms repre-
         sent “an intrusion into peace and quiet in a realm that is private and
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         18                    Opinion of the Court                21-10199

         personal.” Id. at 462 n.1. For that reason, the harms are similar in
         kind, and the receipt of an unwanted text message causes a con-
         crete injury. While an unwanted text message is insuﬃciently of-
         fensive to satisfy the common law’s elements, Congress has used its
         lawmaking powers to recognize a lower quantum of injury neces-
         sary to bring a claim under the TCPA. As a result, the plaintiﬀs’
         harm “is smaller in degree rather than entirely absent.” Hunstein,
         48 F.4th at 1249.
                                         IV.
                Because we hold that the receipt of an unwanted text mes-
         sage causes a concrete injury, we REMAND this appeal to the panel
         to consider the CAFA issues raised in Pinto’s appeal.
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         1              JORDAN and NEWSOM, JJ., Concurring             21-10199

         JORDAN and NEWSOM, Circuit Judges, Concurring:
                 We’ve been critical of this Court’s standing jurisprudence –
         and the Supreme Court’s too, for that matter. See, e.g., Hunstein v.
         Preferred Collection & Mgmt. Servs., Inc., 48 F.4th 1236, 1256 (11th
         Cir. 2022) (en banc) (Newsom, J., joined by Jordan, Rosenbaum,
         and Jill Pryor, JJ., dissenting); Laufer v. Arpan, LLC, 29 F.4th 1268,
         1275 (11th Cir. 2022) (Jordan, J., concurring); id. at 1283 (Newsom,
         J., concurring); Sierra v. City of Hallandale Beach, 996 F.3d 1110, 1115
         (11th Cir. 2021) (Newsom, J., concurring); Muransky v. Godiva Choc-
         olatier, Inc., 979 F.3d 917, 957 (11th Cir. 2020) (en banc) (Jordan, J.,
         dissenting). But we’ll take what we can get, and we’re pleased to
         concur in Judge Rosenbaum’s excellent opinion for the en banc
         Court.
USCA11 Case: 21-10199      Document: 131-1      Date Filed: 07/24/2023     Page: 20 of 20

         1                     BRANCH, J., Concurring                21-10199

         BRANCH, Circuit Judge, Concurring:
                As the Supreme Court advised in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez,
         for purposes of the comparator tort analysis we conduct when as-
         sessing Article III standing, the “close historical or common-law an-
         alogue for [a plaintiﬀ’s] asserted injury” need not be “an exact du-
         plicate in American history and tradition.” 141 S. Ct. 2190, 2204
         (2021). We faithfully heeded this guidance in our en banc decision
         in Hunstein v. Preferred Collection and Management Services, Inc., 48
         F.4th 1236, 1242 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc). Given these recent de-
         velopments in the Article III standing analysis, I fully concur in the
         majority opinion.