In Hinton v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., No. 23-cv-04529-JD, 2026 WL 2959993 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 30, 2026), the court denied class certification in a lawsuit asserting a claim under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).
Plaintiffs alleged that the defendant embedded tracking technologies supplied by Google, Meta, and other third parties on its website, allowing those third parties to intercept visitors’ identities and private health information. Plaintiffs sought certification of damages and injunctive-relief classes consisting of California users who visited specific healthcare-related pages or searched for specific topics on those pages during the class period. The court found that plaintiffs had “manifestly failed to meet their burden under Rule 23(b),” which “alone warranted denial of certification” as to both classes.
As for the damages class, the court first held that plaintiffs failed to show that common issues predominated. Although plaintiffs promised common evidence showing that Meta and Google actually linked class members’ website activity to their identities, the court concluded that their evidence consisted largely of general statements about the purpose of tracking technologies and speculation, which was insufficient. And plaintiffs’ testimony about their own website use was individualized experience, “exactly the opposite of classwide, common proof.”
The court also declined to certify the Rule 23(b)(2) injunctive relief class because plaintiffs had not identified a pattern or practice generally applicable to the class and because the complaint primarily sought monetary, rather than declaratory or injunctive, relief.
This blog has covered the explosion of CIPA and other similar wiretapping cases across the country. Hinton underscores that plaintiffs seeking to certify these kinds of privacy claims must identify evidence capable of proving actual data transmission and identification on a classwide basis. General descriptions of how tracking technologies are designed to operate—and individualized testimony from named plaintiffs—may not be enough to establish predominance. And Plaintiffs in these cases may not be able to rely on what these technologies can theoretically do, but rather must actually show with evidence how they operated in fact.