TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez

P R E L I M I N A R Y P R I N T
Volume 594 U. S. Part 2
Pages 413–463
OFFICIAL REPORTS
OF
T H E S U P R E M E C O U R T
June 25, 2021
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF
reporter of decisions
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OCTOBER
TERM, 2020
413
Syllabus
TRANSUNION LLC v. RAMIREZ
certiorari
to the united states court of appeals for
the ninth circuit
No. 20–297. Argued March 30, 2021—Decided June 25, 2021
The Fair Credit Reporting Act regulates the consumer reporting agencies
that compile and disseminate personal information about consumers.
15 U. S. C. § 1681 et seq. The Act also creates a cause of action for
consumers to sue and recover damages for certain violations.
§ 1681n(a). TransUnion is a credit reporting agency that compiles per-
sonal and fnancial information about individual consumers to create
consumer reports and then sells those reports for use by entities that
request information about the creditworthiness of individual consumers.
Beginning in 2002, TransUnion introduced an add-on product called
OFAC Name Screen Alert. When a business opted into the Name
Screen service, TransUnion would conduct its ordinary credit check of
the consumer, and it would also use third-party software to compare
the consumer's name against a list maintained by the U. S. Treasury
Department's Offce of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of terrorists,
drug traffckers, and other serious criminals. If the consumer's frst
and last name matched the frst and last name of an individual on
OFAC's list, then TransUnion would place an alert on the credit report
indicating that the consumer's name was a “potential match” to a name
on the OFAC list. At that time, TransUnion did not compare any data
other than frst and last names.
A class of 8,185 individuals with OFAC alerts in their credit fles sued
TransUnion under the Fair Credit Reporting Act for failing to use rea-
sonable procedures to ensure the accuracy of their credit fles. The
plaintiffs also complained about formatting defects in certain mailings
sent to them by TransUnion. The parties stipulated prior to trial that
only 1,853 class members (including the named plaintiff Sergio Ramirez)
had their misleading credit reports containing OFAC alerts provided to
third parties during the 7-month period specifed in the class defnition.
The internal credit fles of the other 6,332 class members were not pro-
vided to third parties during the relevant time period. The District
Court ruled that all class members had Article III standing on each of
the three statutory claims. The jury returned a verdict for the plain-
tiffs and awarded each class member statutory damages and punitive
damages. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affrmed in relevant
part.

414 TRANSUNION
LLC v. RAMIREZ
Syllabus
Held: Only plaintiffs concretely harmed by a defendant's statutory viola-
ti
on have Article III standing to seek damages against that private de-
fendant in federal court. Pp. 422–442.
(a) Article III confnes the federal judicial power to the resolution of
“Cases” and “Controversies” in which a plaintiff has a “personal stake.”
Raines v. Byrd, 521 U. S. 811, 819–820. To have Article III standing to
sue in federal court, a plaintiff must show, among other things, that the
plaintiff suffered concrete injury in fact. Lujan v. Defenders of Wild-
life, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561. Central to assessing concreteness is
whether the asserted harm has a “close relationship” to a harm “tradi-
tionally” recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American
courts. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330, 340. That inquiry asks
whether plaintiffs have identifed a close historical or common-law ana-
logue for their asserted injury. Physical or monetary harms readily
qualify as concrete injuries under Article III, and various intangible
harms—like reputational harms—can also be concrete. Ibid.
“Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of
a statutory violation.” Ibid. The Court has rejected the proposition
that “a plaintiff automatically satisfes the injury-in-fact requirement
whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports to
authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right.” Id., at 341. An
injury in law is not an injury in fact. Pp. 422–430.
(b) The Court applies the fundamental standing requirement of con-
crete harm to this case. Pp. 430–442.
(1) In their reasonable-procedures claim, all 8,185 class members
maintain that TransUnion did not do enough to ensure that misleading
OFAC alerts labeling them as potential terrorists were not included in
their credit fles. See § 1681e(b). TransUnion provided third parties
with credit reports containing OFAC alerts for 1,853 class members (in-
cluding the named plaintiff Ramirez). Those 1,853 class members
therefore suffered a harm with a “close relationship” to the harm associ-
ated with the tort of defamation. Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341. Under
longstanding American law, a person is injured when a defamatory
statement “that would subject him to hatred, contempt, or ridicule” is
published to a third party. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U. S.
1, 13. The Court has no trouble concluding that the 1,853 class mem-
bers suffered a concrete harm that qualifes as an injury in fact.
The credit fles of the remaining 6,332 class members also contained
misleading OFAC alerts, but the parties stipulated that TransUnion did
not provide those plaintiffs' credit information to any potential creditors
during the designated class period. The mere existence of inaccurate
information, absent dissemination, traditionally has not provided the
basis for a lawsuit in American courts. The plaintiffs cannot demon-
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as: 594 U. S. 413 (2021)
415
Syllabus
strate that the misleading information in the internal credit fles itself
constitutes
a concrete harm.
The plaintiffs advance a separate argument based on their exposure
to the risk that the misleading information would be disseminated in
the future to third parties. The Court has recognized that material
risk of future harm can satisfy the concrete-harm requirement in the
context of a claim for injunctive relief to prevent the harm from occur-
ring, at least so long as the risk of harm is suffciently imminent and
substantial. See Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341–342 (citing Clapper v.
Amnesty Int'l USA, 568 U. S. 398). But TransUnion advances a per-
suasive argument that the mere risk of future harm, without more,
cannot qualify as a concrete harm in a suit for damages. The 6,332
plaintiffs did not demonstrate that the risk of future harm materialized.
Nor did those plaintiffs present evidence that the class members were
independently harmed by their exposure to the risk itself. The risk of
future harm cannot supply the basis for their standing. Pp. 431–439.
(2) In two other claims, all 8,185 class members complained about
formatting defects in certain mailings sent to them by TransUnion.
But the plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the format of Trans-
Union's mailings caused them a harm with a close relationship to a harm
traditionally recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American
courts. See Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341.
The plaintiffs argue that TransUnion's formatting violations created
a risk of future harm, because consumers who received the information
in the dual-mailing format were at risk of not learning about the OFAC
alert in their credit fles and thus not asking for corrections. The risk
of future harm on its own is not enough to support Article III standing
for their damages claim. In any event, the plaintiffs here made no ef-
fort to explain how the formatting error prevented them asking for cor-
rections to prevent future harm.
The United States as amicus curiae asserts that the plaintiffs suf-
fered a concrete “informational injury” from TransUnion's formatting
violations. See Federal Election Comm'n v. Akins, 524 U. S. 11; Public
Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U. S. 440. But the plaintiffs here
did not allege that they failed to receive any required information.
They argued only that they received the information in the wrong
format. Moreover, an asserted informational injury that causes no
adverse effects does not satisfy Article III. Pp. 439–442.
951 F. 3d 1008, reversed and remanded.
Kavanaugh, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts,
C. J., and Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., fled a
dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined,
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416 TRANSUNION
LLC v. RAMIREZ
Syllabus
post, p. 442. Kagan, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer and
Sotoma
yor, JJ., joined, post, p. 460.
Paul D. Clement argued the cause for petitioner. With
him on the briefs were Erin E. Murphy, Matthew D. Rowen,
Andrew C. Lawrence, Julia B. Strickland, and Stephen J.
Newman.
Nicole Frazer Reaves argued the cause for the United
States as amicus curiae urging vacatur. With her on the
brief were Acting Solicitor General Prelogar, Acting Assist-
ant Attorney General Boynton, Deputy Solicitor General
Stewart, and Charles W. Scarborough.
Samuel Issacharoff argued the cause for respondent.
With him on the brief were James A. Francis, John Soumi-
las, Lauren KW Brennan, Robert H. Klonoff, Elizabeth J.
Cabraser, Andrew R. Kaufman, Jason L. Lichtman, and An-
drew J. Ogilvie.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for ACA Interna-
tional by Jim Moseley and Dylan O. Drummond; for the Chamber of
Commerce of the United States of America et al. by Andrew J. Pincus,
Archis A. Parasharami, Daniel E. Jones, Daryl Joseffer, Karen R.
Harned, and Elizabeth G. Milito; for the Consumer Data Industry Associ-
ation by Misha Tseytlin and Rebecca E. Kuehn; for eBay, Inc., et al. by
Patrick J. Carome, Ari Holtzblatt, and Felicia H. Ellsworth; for the Home
Depot, Inc., et al. by Anton Metlitsky and Jason Zarrow; for the National
Association of Manufacturers et al. by Philip S. Goldberg; for the National
Consumer Reporting Association, Inc., by Christi A. Lawson and John J.
Atallah; for the Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc., by John M.
Thomas; for the Professional Background Screening Association by Pam-
ela Q. Devata; for the Retail Litigation Center, Inc., by Adam G. Unikow-
sky and Deborah R. White; and for the Washington Legal Foundation by
John M. Masslon II and Cory L. Andrews.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the American
Association for Justice by Matthew W. H. Wessler, Jonathan E. Taylor,
and Tobias L. Millrood; for the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws
by Robert S. Kitchenoff; for Complex Litigation Law Professors by Cecily
C. Shiel; for the Constitutional Accountability Center by Elizabeth B.
Wydra, Brianne J. Gorod, David H. Gans, and Brian R. Frazelle; for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation by James Pizzirusso, Michael D. Haus-
feld, and Cindy A. Cohn; for the Electronic Privacy Information Center

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417
Opinion of the Court
Justice Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the Court.
T
o have Article III standing to sue in federal court, plain-
tiffs must demonstrate, among other things, that they suf-
fered a concrete harm. No concrete harm, no standing.
Central to assessing concreteness is whether the asserted
harm has a “close relationship” to a harm traditionally recog-
nized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American courts—
such as physical harm, monetary harm, or various intangible
harms including (as relevant here) reputational harm.
Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330, 340–341 (2016).
In this case, a class of 8,185 individuals sued TransUnion,
a credit reporting agency, in federal court under the Fair
Credit Reporting Act. The plaintiffs claimed that Trans-
Union failed to use reasonable procedures to ensure the ac-
curacy of their credit fles, as maintained internally by
TransUnion. For 1,853 of the class members, TransUnion
provided misleading credit reports to third-party businesses.
We conclude that those 1,853 class members have demon-
strated concrete reputational harm and thus have Article III
standing to sue on the reasonable-procedures claim. The in-
ternal credit fles of the other 6,332 class members were not
provided to third-party businesses during the relevant time
period. We conclude that those 6,332 class members have
not demonstrated concrete harm and thus lack Article III
standing to sue on the reasonable-procedures claim.
by Alan Butler; for the Impact Fund et al. by Sherrilyn Ifll, Janai Nel-
son, Samuel Spital, Jin Hee Lee, Raymond Audain, Coty Montag, Maho-
gane Reed, Jocelyn D. Larkin, and Lindsay Nako; for Legal Scholars by
Travis Lenkner, Ashley Keller, Warren Postman, and Zina Bash; for the
National Association of Consumer Advocates by Adam J. Levitt; for the
National Consumer Law Center et al. by John G. Albanese and Chi Chi
Wu; for Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Inc., by
Charles R. Stinson and Paul D. Cullen, Jr.; Public Citizen et al. by Scott
L. Nelson and Allison M. Zieve; for Public Justice by Karla Gilbride and
Leah M. Nicholls; and for the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law
and Economic Justice et al. by Jeffrey Gentes, J. L. Pottenger, Jr., and Seth
E. Mermin.

418 TRANSUNION
LLC v. RAMIREZ
Opinion of the Court
In two other claims, all 8,185 class members complained
about
formatting defects in certain mailings sent to them by
TransUnion. But the class members other than the named
plaintiff Sergio Ramirez have not demonstrated that the
alleged formatting errors caused them any concrete harm.
Therefore, except for Ramirez, the class members do not
have standing as to those two claims.
Over Judge McKeown's dissent, the U. S. Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit ruled that all 8,185 class members have
standing as to all three claims. The Court of Appeals ap-
proved a class damages award of about $40 million. In light
of our conclusion that (i) only 1,853 class members have
standing for the reasonable-procedures claim and (ii) only
Ramirez himself has standing for the two formatting claims
relating to the mailings, we reverse the judgment of the
Ninth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
I
In 1970, Congress passed and President Nixon signed the
Fair Credit Reporting Act. 84 Stat. 1127, as amended, 15
U. S. C. § 1681 et seq. The Act seeks to promote “fair and
accurate credit reporting ” and to protect consumer privacy.
§ 1681(a). To achieve those goals, the Act regulates the con-
sumer reporting agencies that compile and disseminate per-
sonal information about consumers.
The Act “imposes a host of requirements concerning the
creation and use of consumer reports.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Rob-
ins, 578 U. S. 330, 335 (2016). Three of the Act's require-
ments are relevant to this case. First, the Act requires
consumer reporting agencies to “follow reasonable proce-
dures to assure maximum possible accuracy” in consumer
reports. § 1681e(b). Second, the Act provides that con-
sumer reporting agencies must, upon request, disclose to the
consumer “[a]ll information in the consumer's fle at the time
of the request.” § 1681g(a)(1). Third, the Act compels con-
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419
Opinion of the Court
sumer reporting agencies to “provide to a consumer, with
each
written disclosure by the agency to the consumer,” a
“summary of rights” prepared by the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau. § 1681g(c)(2).
The Act creates a cause of action for consumers to sue and
recover damages for certain violations. The Act provides:
“Any person who willfully fails to comply with any require-
ment imposed under this subchapter with respect to any
consumer is liable to that consumer” for actual damages or
for statutory damages not less than $100 and not more than
$1,000, as well as for punitive damages and attorney's fees.
§ 1681n(a).
TransUnion is one of the “Big Three” credit reporting
agencies, along with Equifax and Experian. As a credit re-
porting agency, TransUnion compiles personal and fnancial
information about individual consumers to create consumer
reports. TransUnion then sells those consumer reports for
use by entities such as banks, landlords, and car dealerships
that request information about the creditworthiness of indi-
vidual consumers.
Beginning in 2002, TransUnion introduced an add-on prod-
uct called OFAC Name Screen Alert. OFAC is the U. S.
Treasury Department's Offce of Foreign Assets Control.
OFAC maintains a list of “specially designated nationals”
who threaten America's national security. Individuals on
the OFAC list are terrorists, drug traffckers, or other seri-
ous criminals. It is generally unlawful to transact business
with any person on the list. 31 CFR pt. 501, App. A (2020).
TransUnion created the OFAC Name Screen Alert to help
businesses avoid transacting with individuals on OFAC's list.
When this litigation arose, Name Screen worked in the
following way: When a business opted into the Name Screen
service, TransUnion would conduct its ordinary credit check
of the consumer, and it would also use third-party software
to compare the consumer's name against the OFAC list. If
the consumer's frst and last name matched the frst and last
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420 TRANSUNION
LLC v. RAMIREZ
Opinion of the Court
name of an individual on OFAC's list, then TransUnion would
place
an alert on the credit report indicating that the con-
sumer's name was a “potential match” to a name on the
OFAC list. TransUnion did not compare any data other
than frst and last names. Unsurprisingly, TransUnion's
Name Screen produc t generated many fa lse positives.
Thousands of law-abiding Americans happen to share a frst
and last name with one of the terrorists, drug traffckers, or
serious criminals on OFAC's list of specially designated
nationals.
Sergio Ramirez learned the hard way that he is one such
individual. On February 27, 2011, Ramirez visited a Nissan
dealership in Dublin, California, seeking to buy a Nissan
Maxima. Ramirez was accompanied by his wife and his
father-in-law. After Ramirez and his wife selected a color
and negotiated a price, the dealership ran a credit check
on both Ramirez and his wife. Ramirez's credit report,
produced by TransUnion, contained the following alert:
“***OFAC ADVISOR ALERT - INPUT NAME MATCHES
NAME ON THE OFAC DATABASE.” App. 84. A Nissan
salesman told Ramirez that Nissan would not sell the car to
him because his name was on a “ `terrorist list.' ” Id., at 333.
Ramirez's wife had to purchase the car in her own name.
The next day, Ramirez called TransUnion and requested a
copy of his credit fle. TransUnion sent Ramirez a mailing
that same day that included his credit fle and the statutorily
required summary of rights prepared by the CFPB. The
mailing did not mention the OFAC alert in Ramirez's
fle. The following day, TransUnion sent Ramirez a second
mailing—a letter alerting him that his name was considered
a potential match to names on the OFAC list. The second
mailing did not include an additional copy of the summary of
rights. Concerned about the mailings, Ramirez consulted a
lawyer and ultimately canceled a planned trip to Mexico.
TransUnion eventually removed the OFAC alert from Rami-
rez's fle.
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421
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In February 2012, Ramirez sued TransUnion and alleged
three
violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. First, he
alleged that TransUnion, by using the Name Screen product,
failed to follow reasonable procedures to ensure the accuracy
of information in his credit fle. See § 1681e(b). Second, he
claimed that TransUnion failed to provide him with all
the information in his credit fle upon his request. In partic-
ular, TransUnion's frst mailing did not include the fact that
Ramirez's name was a potential match for a name on the
OFAC list. See § 1681g(a)(1). Third, Ramirez asserted that
TransUnion violated its obligation to provide him with
a summary of his rights “with each written disclosure,”
because TransUnion's second mailing did not contain a
summary of Ramirez's rights. § 1681g(c)(2). Ramirez re-
quested statutory and punitive damages.
Ramirez also sought to certify a class of all people in the
United States to whom TransUnion sent a mailing during
the period from January 1, 2011, to July 26, 2011, that was
similar in form to the second mailing that Ramirez received.
TransUnion opposed certifcation. The U. S. District Court
for the Northern District of California rejected TransUnion's
argument and certifed the class. 301 F. R. D. 408 (2014).
Before trial, the parties stipulated that the class contained
8,185 members, including Ramirez. The parties also stipu-
lated that only 1,853 members of the class (including Rami-
rez) had their credit reports disseminated by TransUnion to
potential creditors during the period from January 1, 2011, to
July 26, 2011. The District Court ruled that all 8,185 class
members had Article III standing. 2016 WL 6070490, *5
(Oct. 17, 2016).
At trial, Ramirez testifed about his experience at the Nis-
san dealership. But Ramirez did not present evidence about
the experiences of other members of the class.
After six days of trial, the jury returned a verdict for the
plaintiffs. The jury awarded each class member $984.22 in
statutory damages and $6,353.08 in punitive damages for a

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422 TRANSUNION
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total award of more than $60 million. The District Court
re
jected all of TransUnion's post-trial motions.
The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affrmed
in relevant part. 951 F. 3d 1008 (2020). The court held that
all members of the class had Article III standing to recover
damages for all three claims. The court also concluded that
Ramirez's claims were typical of the class's claims for pur-
poses of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Finally, the court reduced the punitive damages award to
$3,936.88 per class member, thus reducing the total award to
about $40 million.
Judge McKeown dissented in relevant part. As to the
reasonable-procedures claim, she concluded that only the
1,853 class members whose reports were actually dissemi-
nated by TransUnion to third parties had Article III stand-
ing to recover damages. In her view, the remaining 6,332
class members did not suffer a concrete injury suffcient for
standing. As to the two claims related to the mailings,
Judge McKeown would have held that none of the 8,185 class
members other than the named plaintiff Ramirez had stand-
ing as to those claims.
We granted certiorari. 592 U. S. ––– (2020).
II
The question in this case is whether the 8,185 class mem-
bers have Article III standing as to their three claims.
In Part II, we summarize the requirements of Article III
standing—in particular, the requirement that plaintiffs dem-
onstrate a “concrete harm.” In Part III, we then apply the
concrete-harm requirement to the plaintiffs' lawsuit against
TransUnion.
A
The “law of Art. III standing is built on a single basic
idea—the idea of separation of powers.” Raines v. Byrd,
521 U. S. 811, 820 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Separation of powers “was not simply an abstract generaliza-

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423
Opinion of the Court
tion in the minds of the Framers: it was woven into the docu-
ment
that they drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of
1787.” INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 946 (1983) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
Therefore, we start with the text of the Constitution. Ar-
ticle III confnes the federal judicial power to the resolution
of “Cases” and “Controversies.” For there to be a case or
controversy under Article III, the plaintiff must have a
“ `personal stake' ” in the case—in other words, standing.
Raines, 521 U. S., at 819. To demonstrate their personal
stake, plaintiffs must be able to suffciently answer the ques-
tion: “ `What's it to you?' ” Scalia, The Doctrine of Standing
as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers, 17 Suf-
folk U. L. Rev. 881, 882 (1983).
To answer that question in a way suffcient to establish
standing, a plaintiff must show (i) that he suffered an injury
in fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or immi-
nent; (ii) that the injury was likely caused by the defendant;
and (iii) that the injury would likely be redressed by judicial
relief. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560–
561 (1992). If “the plaintiff does not claim to have suffered
an injury that the defendant caused and the court can rem-
edy, there is no case or controversy for the federal court to
resolve.” Casillas v. Madison Avenue Assocs., Inc., 926
F. 3d 329, 333 (CA7 2019) (Barrett, J.).
Requiring a plaintiff to demonstrate a concrete and partic-
ularized injury caused by the defendant and redressable by
the court ensures that federal courts decide only “the rights
of individuals,” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 170
(1803), and that federal courts exercise “their proper func-
tion in a limited and separated government,” Roberts, Arti-
cle III Limits on Statutory Standing, 42 Duke L. J. 1219, 1224
(1993). Under Article III, federal courts do not adjudicate
hypothetical or abstract disputes. Federal courts do not
possess a roving commission to publicly opine on every legal
question. Federal courts do not exercise general legal over-

424 TRANSUNION
LLC v. RAMIREZ
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sight of the Legislative and Executive Branches, or of pri-
vate
entities. And federal courts do not issue advisory opin-
ions. As Madison explained in Philadelphia, federal courts
instead decide only matters “of a Judiciary Nature.” 2 Rec-
ords of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 430 (M. Farrand
ed. 1966).
In sum, under Article III, a federal court may resolve only
“a real controversy with real impact on real persons.”
American Legion v. American Humanist Assn., 588 U. S.
–––, ––– (2019) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment).
B
The question in this case focuses on the Article III re-
quirement that the plaintiff 's injury in fact be “concrete”—
that is, “real, and not abstract.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578
U. S. 330, 340 (2016) (internal quotation marks omitted); see
Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U. S. 149, 158 (2014);
Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U. S. 488, 493 (2009);
Lujan, 504 U. S., at 560; Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to
Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 220–221 (1974).
What makes a harm concrete for purposes of Article III?
As a general matter, the Court has explained that “history
and tradition offer a meaningful guide to the types of cases
that Ar ticle III empowers federa l cour ts to consider. ”
Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., 554
U. S. 269, 274 (2008); see also Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better
Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 102 (1998). And with respect
to the concrete-harm requirement in particular, this Court's
opinion in Spokeo v. Robins indicated that courts should as-
sess whether the alleged injury to the plaintiff has a “close
relationship” to a harm “traditionally” recognized as provid-
ing a basis for a lawsuit in American courts. 578 U. S., at
341. That inquiry asks whether plaintiffs have identifed a
close historical or common-law analogue for their asserted
injury. Spokeo does not require an exact duplicate in Ameri-
can history and tradition. But Spokeo is not an open-ended
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425
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invitation for federal courts to loosen Article III based on
contemporary
, evolving beliefs about what kinds of suits
should be heard in federal courts.
As Spokeo explained, certain harms readily qualify as
concrete injuries under Article III. The most obvious are
traditional tangible harms, such as physical harms and mone-
tary harms. If a defendant has caused physical or monetary
injury to the plaintiff, the plaintiff has suffered a concrete
injury in fact under Article III.
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. Id., at 340–341. Those include, for exam-
ple, reputational harms, disclosure of private information,
and intrusion upon seclusion. See, e. g., Meese v. Keene, 481
U. S. 465, 473 (1987) (reputational harms); Davis v. Federal
Election Comm'n, 554 U. S. 724, 733 (2008) (disclosure of pri-
vate information); see also Gadelhak v. AT&T Services, Inc.,
950 F. 3d 458, 462 (CA7 2020) (Barrett, J.) (intrusion upon
seclusion). And those traditional harms may also include
harms specifed by the Constitution itself. See, e. g., Spokeo,
578 U. S., at 340 (citing Pleasant Grove City v. Summum,
555 U. S. 460 (2009) (abridgment of free speech), and Church
of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520 (1993)
(infringement of free exercise)).
In determining whether a harm is suffciently concrete to
qualify as an injury in fact, the Court in Spokeo said that
Congress's views may be “instructive.” 578 U. S., at 341.
Courts must afford due respect to Congress's decision to im-
pose a statutory prohibition or obligation on a defendant, and
to grant a plaintiff a cause of action to sue over the defend-
ant's violation of that statutory prohibition or obligation.
See id., at 340–341. In that way, Congress may “elevate to
the status of legally cognizable injuries concrete, de facto
injuries that were previously inadequate in law.” Id., at 341
(alterations and internal quotation marks omitted); see

426 TRANSUNION
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Lujan, 504 U. S., at 562–563, 578; cf., e. g., Allen v. Wright,
468
U. S. 737, 757, n. 22 (1984) (discriminatory treatment).
But even though “Congress may `elevate' harms that `exist'
in the real world before Congress recognized them to action-
able legal status, it may not simply enact an injury into exist-
ence, using its lawmaking power to transform something
that is not remotely harmful into something that is.” Hagy
v. Demers & Adams, 882 F. 3d 616, 622 (CA6 2018) (Sut-
ton, J.) (citing Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341).
Importantly, this Court has rejected the proposition that
“a plaintiff automatically satisfes the injury-in-fact require-
ment whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right
and purports to authorize that person to sue to vindicate
that right.” Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341. As the Court em-
phasized in Spokeo, “Article III standing requires a concrete
injury even in the context of a statutory violation.” Ibid.
Congress's creation of a statutory prohibition or obligation
and a cause of action does not relieve courts of their responsi-
bility to independently decide whether a plaintiff has suf-
fered a concrete harm under Article III any more than, for
example, Congress's enactment of a law regulating speech
relieves courts of their responsibility to independently decide
whether the law violates the First Amendment. Cf. United
States v. Eichman, 496 U. S. 310, 317–318 (1990). As Judge
Katsas has rightly stated, “we cannot treat an injury as `con-
crete' for Article III purposes based only on Congress's say-
so.” Trichell v. Midland Credit Mgmt., Inc., 964 F. 3d 990,
999, n. 2 (CA11 2020) (sitting by designation); see Marbury,
1 Cranch, at 178; see also Raines, 521 U. S., at 820, n. 3;
Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426
U. S. 26, 41, n. 22 (1976); Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S.
346, 361–362 (1911).
For standing purposes, therefore, an important difference
exists between (i) a plaintiff 's statutory cause of action to
sue a defendant over the defendant's violation of federal law,
and (ii) a plaintiff 's suffering concrete harm because of the
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defendant's violation of federal law. Congress may enact
lega
l prohibitions and obligations. And Congress may
create causes of action for plaintiffs to sue defendants who
violate those legal prohibitions or obligations. But under
Article III, an injury in law is not an injury in fact. Only
those plaintiffs who have been concretely harmed by a de-
fendant's statutory violation may sue that private defendant
over that violation in federal court. As then-Judge Barrett
succinctly summarized, “Article III grants federal courts the
power to redress harms that defendants cause plaintiffs, not
a freewheeling power to hold defendants accountable for
legal infractions.” Casillas, 926 F. 3d, at 332.
To appreciate how the Article III “concrete harm” princi-
ple operates in practice, consider two different hypothetical
plaintiffs. Suppose frst that a Maine citizen's land is pol-
luted by a nearby factory. She sues the company, alleging
that it violated a federal environmental law and damaged her
property. Suppose also that a second plaintiff in Hawaii
fles a federal lawsuit alleging that the same company in
Maine violated that same environmental law by polluting
land in Maine. The violation did not personally harm the
plaintiff in Hawaii.
Even if Congress affords both hypothetical plaintiffs a
cause of action (with statutory damages available) to sue
over the defendant's legal violation, Article III standing doc-
trine sharply distinguishes between those two scenarios.
The frst lawsuit may of course proceed in federal court be-
cause the plaintiff has suffered concrete harm to her prop-
erty. But the second lawsuit may not proceed because that
plaintiff has not suffered any physical, monetary, or cogniza-
ble intangible harm traditionally recognized as providing
a basis for a lawsuit in American courts. An uninjured
plaintiff who sues in those circumstances is, by defnition,
not seeking to remedy any harm to herself but instead is
merely seeking to ensure a defendant's “compliance with reg-
ulatory law” (and, of course, to obtain some money via the
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statutory damages). Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 345 (Thomas, J.,
concurr
ing) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Steel
Co., 523 U. S., at 106–107. Those are not grounds for Arti-
cle III standing.
1
As those examples illustrate, if the law of Article III did
not require plaintiffs to demonstrate a “concrete harm,” Con-
gress could authorize virtually any citizen to bring a statu-
tory damages suit against virtually any defendant who
violated virtually any federal law. Such an expansive un-
derstanding of Article III would fout constitutional text, his-
tory, and precedent. In our view, the public interest that
private entities comply with the law cannot “be converted
into an individual right by a statute that denominates it as
such, and that permits all citizens (or, for that matter, a sub-
1
The lead dissent notes that the terminology of injury in fact became
prevalent only in the latter half of the 20th century. That is unsurprising
because until the 20th century, Congress did not often afford federal “citi-
zen suit”-style causes of action to private plaintiffs who did not suffer
concrete harms. For example, until the 20th century, Congress generally
did not create “citizen suit” causes of action for private plaintiffs to sue
the Government. See Magill, Standing for the Public, 95 Va. L. Rev. 1131,
1186–1187 (2009). Moreover, until Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387
U. S. 136 (1967), a plaintiff often could not bring a pre-enforcement suit
against a Government agency or offcial under the Administrative Proce-
dure Act arguing that an agency rule was unlawful; instead, a party could
raise such an argument only in an enforcement action. Likewise, until
the 20th century, Congress rarely created “citizen suit”-style causes of
action for suits against private parties by private plaintiffs who had not
suffered a concrete harm. All told, until the 20th century, this Court had
little reason to emphasize the injury-in-fact requirement because, until the
20th century, there were relatively few instances where litigants without
concrete injuries had a cause of action to sue in federal court. The situa-
tion has changed markedly, especially over the last 50 years or so. During
that time, Congress has created many novel and expansive causes of action
that in turn have required greater judicial focus on the requirements of
Article III. See, e. g., Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330 (2016); Sum-
mers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U. S. 488 (2009); Lujan v. Defenders
of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555 (1992).

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class of citizens who suffer no distinctive concrete harm) to
sue
.” Lujan, 504 U. S., at 576–577.
2
A regime where Congress could freely authorize un-
harmed plaintiffs to sue defendants who violate federal
law not only would violate Article III but also would infringe
on the Executive Branch's Article II authority. We accept
the “displacement of the democratically elected branches
when necessary to decide an actual case.” Roberts, 42 Duke
L. J., at 1230. But otherwise, the choice of how to prioritize
and how aggressively to pursue legal actions against defend-
ants who violate the law falls within the discretion of the
Executive Branch, not within the purview of private plain-
tiffs (and their attorneys). Private plaintiffs are not ac-
countable to the people and are not charged with pursuing
the public interest in enforcing a defendant's general compli-
ance with regulatory law. See Lujan, 504 U. S., at 577.
In sum, the concrete-harm requirement is essential to
the Constitution's separation of powers. To be sure, the
concrete-harm requirement can be diffcult to apply in some
cases. Some advocate that the concrete-harm requirement
be ditched altogether, on the theory that it would be more
effcient or convenient to simply say that a statutory viola-
tion and a cause of action suffce to afford a plaintiff standing.
But as the Court has often stated, “the fact that a given law
or procedure is effcient, convenient, and useful in facilitating
2
A plaintiff must show that the injury is not only concrete but also
particularized. But if there were no concrete-harm requirement, the re-
quirement of a particularized injury would do little or nothing to constrain
Congress from freely creating causes of action for vast classes of un-
harmed plaintiffs to sue any defendants who violate any federal law.
(Congress might, for example, provide that everyone has an individual
right to clean air and can sue any defendant who violates any air-pollution
law.) That is one reason why the Court has been careful to emphasize
that concreteness and particularization are separate requirements. See
Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 339–340; see generally Bayefsky, Constitutional In-
jury and Tangibility, 59 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2285, 2298–2300, 2368 (2018).
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functions of government, standing alone, will not save it if it
is
contrary to the Constitution.” Chadha, 462 U. S., at 944.
So it is here.
3
III
We now apply those fundamental standing principles to
this lawsuit. We must determine whether the 8,185 class
members have standing to sue TransUnion for its alleged
violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The plaintiffs
argue that TransUnion failed to comply with statutory obli-
gations (i) to follow reasonable procedures to ensure the ac-
curacy of credit fles so that the fles would not include OFAC
alerts labeling the plaintiffs as potential terrorists; and (ii)
to provide a consumer, upon request, with his or her com-
plete credit fle, including a summary of rights.
Some preliminaries: As the party invoking federal juris-
diction, the plaintiffs bear the burden of demonstrating that
3
The lead dissent would reject the core standing principle that a plain-
tiff must always have suffered a concrete harm, and would cast aside
decades of precedent articulating that requirement, such as Spokeo, Sum-
mers, and Lujan. Post, at 450–452 (opinion of Thomas, J.). As we see
it, the dissent's theory would largely outsource Article III to Congress.
As we understand the dissent's theory, a suit seeking to enforce “general
compliance with regulatory law” would not suffce for Article III standing
because such a suit seeks to vindicate a duty owed to the whole commu-
nity. Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 345 (Thomas, J., concurring) (internal quota-
tion marks omitted). But under the dissent's theory, so long as Congress
frames a defendant's obligation to comply with regulatory law as an obliga-
tion owed to individuals, any suit to vindicate that obligation suddenly
suffces for Article III. Suppose, for example, that Congress passes a law
purporting to give all American citizens an individual right to clean air
and clean water, as well as a cause of action to sue and recover $100 in
damages from any business that violates any pollution law anywhere in
the United States. The dissent apparently would fnd standing in such a
case. We respectfully disagree. In our view, unharmed plaintiffs who
seek to sue under such a law are still doing no more than enforcing general
compliance with regulatory law. And under Article III and this Court's
precedents, Congress may not authorize plaintiffs who have not suffered
concrete harms to sue in federal court simply to enforce general compli-
ance with regulatory law.

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Opinion of the Court
they have standing. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,
504
U. S. 555, 561 (1992). Every class member must have
Article III standing in order to recover individual damages.
“Article III does not give federal courts the power to
order relief to any uninjured plaintiff, class action or not.”
Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U. S. 442, 466 (2016)
(Roberts, C. J., concurring).
4
Plaintiffs must maintain
their personal interest in the dispute at all stages of litiga-
tion. Davis v. Federal Election Comm'n, 554 U. S. 724, 733
(2008). A plaintiff must demonstrate standing “with the
manner and degree of evidence required at the successive
stages of the litigation.” Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561. There-
fore, in a case like this that proceeds to trial, the specifc
facts set forth by the plaintiff to support standing “must be
supported adequately by the evidence adduced at trial.”
Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). And standing is
not dispensed in gross; rather, plaintiffs must demonstrate
standing for each claim that they press and for each form
of relief that they seek (for example, injunctive relief and
damages). Davis, 554 U. S., at 734; Friends of the Earth,
Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528
U. S. 167, 185 (2000).
A
We frst address the plaintiffs' claim that TransUnion
failed to “follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum
possible accuracy” of the plaintiffs' credit fles maintained
by TransUnion. 15 U. S. C. § 1681e(b). In particular, the
plaintiffs argue that TransUnion did not do enough to ensure
that OFAC alerts labeling them as potential terrorists were
not included in their credit fles.
Assuming that the plaintiffs are correct that TransUnion
violated its obligations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act
4
We do not here address the distinct question whether every class mem-
ber must demonstrate standing before a court certifes a class. See, e. g.,
Cordoba v. DIRECTV, LLC, 942 F. 3d 1259, 1277 (CA11 2019).

432 TRANSUNION
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Opinion of the Court
to use reasonable procedures in internally maintaining the
credit
fles, we must determine whether the 8,185 class mem-
bers suffered concrete harm from TransUnion's failure to
employ reasonable procedures.
5
1
Start with the 1,853 class members (including the named
plaintiff Ramirez) whose reports were disseminated to third-
party businesses. The plaintiffs argue that the publication
to a third party of a credit report bearing a misleading OFAC
alert injures the subject of the report. The plaintiffs con-
tend that this injury bears a “close relationship” to a harm
traditionally recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in
American courts—namely, the reputational harm associated
with the tort of defamation. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578
U. S. 330, 341 (2016).
We agree with the plaintiffs. Under longstanding Ameri-
can law, a person is injured when a defamatory statement
“that would subject him to hatred, contempt, or ridicule”
is published to a third party. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal
Co., 497 U. S. 1, 13 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted);
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 349 (1974); see also
Restatement of Torts § 559 (1938). TransUnion provided
third parties with credit reports containing OFAC alerts that
labeled the class members as potential terrorists, drug traf-
fickers, or ser ious cr iminals. The 1,853 class members
therefore suffered a harm with a “close relationship” to the
harm associated with the tort of defamation. We have no
trouble concluding that the 1,853 class members suffered a
concrete harm that qualifes as an injury in fact.
5
For purposes of this case, the parties have assumed that TransUnion
violated the statute even with respect to those plaintiffs whose OFAC
alerts were never disseminated to third-party businesses. But see Wash-
ington v. CSC Credit Servs. Inc., 199 F. 3d 263, 267 (CA5 2000). We take
no position on that issue.
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Opinion of the Court
TransUni on counters that those 1,853 class members
did
not suffer a harm with a “close relationship” to defama-
tion because the OFAC alerts on the disseminated credit re-
ports were only misleading and not literally false. See id.,
§ 558. TransUnion points out that the reports merely iden-
tifed a consumer as a “potential match” to an individual on
the OFAC list—a fact that TransUnion says is not technically
false.
In looking to whether a plaintiff 's asserted harm has a
“close relationship” to a harm traditionally recognized as
providing a basis for a lawsuit in American courts, we do not
require an exact duplicate. The harm from being labeled a
“potential terrorist” bears a close relationship to the harm
from being labeled a “terrorist.” In other words, the harm
from a misleading statement of this kind bears a suffciently
close relationship to the harm from a false and defamatory
statement.
In short, the 1,853 class members whose reports were dis-
seminated to third parties suffered a concrete injury in fact
under Article III.
2
The remaining 6,332 class members are a different story.
To be sure, their credit fles, which were maintained by
TransUnion, contained misleading OFAC alerts. But the
parties stipulated that TransUnion did not provide those
plaintiffs' credit information to any potential creditors dur-
ing the class period from January 2011 to July 2011. Given
the absence of dissemination, we must determine whether
the 6,332 class members suffered some other concrete harm
for purposes of Article III.
The initial question is whether the mere existence of a
misleading OFAC alert in a consumer's internal credit fle at
TransUnion constitutes a concrete injury. As Judge Tatel
phrased it in a similar context, “if inaccurate information
falls into” a consumer's credit fle, “does it make a sound?”
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Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn., Inc. v. United
Sta
tes Dept. of Transp., 879 F. 3d 339, 344 (CADC 2018).
Writing the opinion for the D. C. Circuit in Owner-
Operator, Judge Tatel answered no. Publication is “essen-
tial to liability” in a suit for defamation. Restatement of
Torts § 577, Comment a, at 192. And there is “no historical
or common-law analog where the mere existence of inaccu-
rate information, absent dissemination, amounts to concrete
injury.” Owner-Operator, 879 F. 3d, at 344–345. “Since
the basis of the action for words was the loss of credit or
fame, and not the insult, it was always necessary to show a
publication of the words.” J. Baker, An Introduction to
English Legal History 474 (5th ed. 2019). Other Courts of
Appeals have similarly recognized that, as Judge Colloton
summarized, the “retention of information lawfully obtained,
without further disclosure, traditionally has not provided the
basis for a lawsuit in American courts,” meaning that the
mere existence of inaccurate information in a database is
insuffcient to confer Article III standing. Braitberg v.
Charter Communications, Inc., 836 F. 3d 925, 930 (CA8
2016); see Gubala v. Time Warner Cable, Inc., 846 F. 3d 909,
912 (CA7 2017).
The st andi ng i nquiry i n th is case thus disti ng uishes
between (i) credit fles that consumer reporting agencies
maintain internally and (ii) the consumer credit reports that
consumer reporting agencies disseminate to third-party
creditors. The mere presence of an inaccuracy in an inter-
nal credit fle, if it is not disclosed to a third party, causes
no concrete harm. In cases such as these where allegedly
inaccurate or misleading information sits in a company data-
base, the plaintiffs' harm is roughly the same, legally speak-
ing, as if someone wrote a defamatory letter and then stored
it in her desk drawer. A letter that is not sent does not harm
anyone, no matter how insulting the letter is. So too here.
6
6
For the frst time in this Court, the plaintiffs also argue that Trans-
Union “published” the class members' information internally—for exam-
ple, to employees within TransUnion and to the vendors that printed and
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Because the plai nti ffs cannot demonstrate that the
misleadi
ng information in the internal credit fles itself
constitutes a concrete harm, the plaintiffs advance a separate
argument based on an asserted risk of future harm. They
say that the 6,332 class members suffered a concrete injury
for Article III purposes because the existence of misleading
OFAC alerts in their internal credit fles exposed them to a
material risk that the information would be disseminated in
the future to third parties and thereby cause them harm.
The plaintiffs rely on language from Spokeo where the Court
said that “the risk of real harm” (or as the Court otherwise
stated, a “material risk of harm”) can sometimes “satisfy the
requirement of concreteness.” 578 U. S., at 341–342 (citing
Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l USA, 568 U. S. 398 (2013)).
To support its statement that a material risk of future
harm can satisfy the concrete-harm requirement, Spokeo
cited this Court's decision in Clapper. But importantly,
Clapper involved a suit for injunctive relief. As this Court
has recognized, a person exposed to a risk of future harm
may pursue forward-looking, injunctive relief to prevent the
harm from occurring, at least so long as the risk of harm is
suffciently imminent and substantial. See Clapper, 568
sent the mailings that the class members received. That new argument
is forfeited. In any event, it is unavailing. Many American courts did
not traditionally recognize intra-company disclosures as actionable publi-
cations for purposes of the tort of defamation. See, e. g., Chalkley v. At-
lantic Coast Line R. Co., 150 Va. 301, 326–328, 143 S. E. 631, 638–639
(1928). Nor have they necessarily recognized disclosures to printing ven-
dors as actionable publications. See, e. g., Mack v. Delta Air Lines, Inc.,
639 Fed. Appx. 582, 586 (CA11 2016). Moreover, even the plaintiffs' cited
cases require evidence that the defendant actually “brought an idea to the
perception of another,” Restatement of Torts § 559, Comment a, p. 140
(1938), and thus generally require evidence that the document was actually
read and not merely processed, cf. Ostrowe v. Lee, 256 N. Y. 36, 38–39, 175
N. E. 505, 505–506 (1931) (Cardozo, C. J.). That evidence is lacking here.
In short, the plaintiffs' internal publication theory circumvents a funda-
mental requirement of an ordinary defamation claim—publication—and
does not bear a suffciently “close relationship” to the traditional defama-
tion tort to qualify for Article III standing.
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U. S., at 414, n. 5; Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 102
(1983);
see also Gubala, 846 F. 3d, at 912.
But a plaintiff must “demonstrate standing separately for
each form of relief sought.” Friends of the Earth, 528 U. S.,
at 185. Therefore, a plaintiff 's standing to seek injunctive
relief does not necessarily mean that the plaintiff has stand-
ing to seek retrospective damages.
TransUnion advances a persuasive argument that in a suit
for damages, the mere risk of future harm, standing alone,
cannot qualify as a concrete harm—at least unless the expo-
sure to the risk of future harm itself causes a separate con-
crete harm. Brief for Petitioner 39, n. 4; Tr. of Oral Arg.
36.
7
TransUnion contends that if an individual is exposed
to a risk of future harm, time will eventually reveal whether
the risk materializes in the form of actual harm. If the risk
of future harm materializes and the individual suffers a con-
crete harm, then the harm itself, and not the pre-existing
risk, will constitute a basis for the person's injury and for
damages. If the risk of future harm does not materialize,
then the individual cannot establish a concrete harm suff-
cient for standing, according to TransUnion.
Consider an example. Suppose that a woman drives home
from work a quarter mile ahead of a reckless driver who is
dangerously swerving across lanes. The reckless driver has
exposed the woman to a risk of future harm, but the risk
7
For example, 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. We take no position on whether
or how such an emotional or psychological harm could suffce for Arti-
cle III purposes—for example, by analogy to the tort of intentional infic-
tion of emotional distress. See Reply Brief 14; Tr. of Oral Arg. 30. The
plaintiffs here have not relied on such a theory of Article III harm. They
have not claimed an emotional distress injury from the risk that a mislead-
ing credit report might be sent to a third-party business. Nor could they
do so, given that the 6,332 plaintiffs have not established that they were
even aware of the misleading information in the internal credit fles main-
tained at TransUnion.

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does not materialize and the woman makes it home safely.
As
counsel for TransUnion stated, that would ordinarily be
cause for celebration, not a lawsuit. Id., at 8. But if the
reckless driver crashes into the woman's car, the situation
would be different, and (assuming a cause of action) the
woman could sue the driver for damages.
The plaintiffs note that Spokeo cited libel and slander
per se as examples of cases where, as the plaintiffs see it, a
mere risk of harm suffces for a damages claim. But as
Judge Tatel explained for the D. C. Circuit, libel and slander
per se “require evidence of publication.” Owner-Operator,
879 F. 3d, at 345. And for those torts, publication is gener-
ally presumed to cause a harm, albeit not a readily quantif-
able harm. As Spokeo noted, “the law has long permitted
recovery by certain tort victims even if their harms may be
diffcult to prove or measure.” 578 U. S., at 341 (emphasis
added). But there is a signifcant difference between (i) an
actual harm that has occurred but is not readily quantifable,
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, without more, suf-
fces 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 inaccurate
OFAC alerts in their internal TransUnion credit fles were
ever provided to third parties or caused a denial of credit.
Nor did those plaintiffs present evidence that the class mem-
bers were independently harmed by their exposure 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 businesses.
Therefore, the 6,332 plaintiffs' argument for standing 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

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not factually establish a suffcient risk of future harm to sup-
por
t Article III standing. As Judge McKeown explained in
her dissent, the risk of future harm that the 6,332 plaintiffs
identifed—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 TransUnion could
have divulged their misleading credit information to a third
party at any moment. But the plaintiffs did not demonstrate
a suffcient likelihood that their individual credit information
would be requested by third-party businesses and provided by
TransUnion during the relevant time period. Nor did the
plaintiffs demonstrate that there was a suffcient likelihood
that TransUnion would otherwise intentionally or acciden-
tally release their information to third parties. “Because no
evidence in the record establishes a serious likelihood of dis-
closure, we cannot simply presume a material risk of con-
crete harm.” 951 F. 3d, at 1040 (opinion of McKeown, J.).
Moreover, the plaintiffs did not present any evidence that
the 6,332 class members even knew that there were OFAC
alerts in their internal TransUnion credit fles. If those
plaintiffs prevailed in this case, many of them would frst
learn that they were “injured” when they received a check
compensating them for their supposed “injury.” It is diff-
cult to see how a risk of future harm could supply the basis
for a plaintiff 's standing when the plaintiff did not even know
that there was a risk of future harm.
Finally, the plaintiffs advance one last argument for why
the 6,332 class members are similarly situated to the other
1,853 class members and thus should have standing. The
6,332 plaintiffs note that they sought damages for the entire
46-month period permitted by the statute of limitations,
whereas the stipulation regarding dissemination covered
only 7 of those months. They argue that the credit reports
of many of those 6,332 class members were likely also sent to
third parties outside of the period covered by the stipulation

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because all of the class members requested copies of their
repor
ts, and consumers usually do not request copies unless
they are contemplating a transaction that would trigger a
credit check.
That is a serious argument, but in the end, we conclude
that it fails to support standing for the 6,332 class members.
The plaintiffs had the burden to prove at trial that their re-
ports were actually sent to third-party businesses. The in-
ferences on which the argument rests are too weak to
demonstrate that the reports of any particular number of
the 6,332 class members were sent to third-party businesses.
The plaintiffs' attorneys could have attempted to show that
some or all of the 6,332 class members were injured in that
way. They presumably could have sought the names and
addresses of those individuals, and they could have contacted
them. In the face of the stipulation, which pointedly failed
to demonstrate dissemination for those class members, the
inferences on which the plaintiffs rely are insuffcient to sup-
port standing. Cf. Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. United States,
306 U. S. 208, 226 (1939) (“The production of weak evidence
when strong is available can lead only to the conclusion that
the strong would have been adverse”).
In sum, the 6,332 class members whose internal Trans-
Union credit fles were not disseminated to third-party
businesses did not suffer a concrete harm. By contrast, the
1,853 class members (including Ramirez) whose credit re-
ports were disseminated to third-party businesses during
the class period suffered a concrete harm.
B
We next address the plaintiffs' standing to recover dam-
ages for two other claims in the complaint: the disclosure
claim and the summary-of-rights claim. Those two claims
are intertwined.
In the disclosure claim, the plaintiffs alleged that Trans-
Union breached its obligation to provide them with their
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Opinion of the Court
complete credit fles upon request. According to the plain-
ti
ffs, TransUnion sent the plaintiffs copies of their credit fles
that omitted the OFAC information, and then in a second
mailing sent the OFAC information. See § 1681g(a)(1). In
the summary-of-rights claim, the plaintiffs further asserted
that TransUnion should have included another summary of
rights in that second mailing—the mailing that included the
OFAC information. See § 1681g(c)(2). As the plaintiffs
note, the disclosure and summary-of-rights requirements are
designed to protect consumers' interests in learning of any
inaccuracies in their credit fles so that they can promptly
correct the fles before they are disseminated to third parties.
In support of standing, the plaintiffs thus contend that the
TransUnion mailings were formatted incorrectly and de-
prived them of their right to receive information in the for-
mat required by statute. But the plaintiffs have not demon-
strated that the format of TransUnion's mailings caused
them a harm with a close relationship to a harm traditionally
recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American
courts. See Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341. In fact, they do not
demonstrate that they suffered any harm at all from the
formatting violations. The plaintiffs presented no evidence
that, other than Ramirez, “a single other class member so
much as opened the dual mailings,” “nor that they were con-
fused, distressed, or relied on the information in any way.”
951 F. 3d, at 1039, 1041 (opinion of McKeown, J.) (emphasis
added). The plaintiffs put forth no evidence, moreover, that
the plaintiffs would have tried to correct their credit fles—
and thereby prevented dissemination of a misleading
report—had they been sent the information in the proper
format. Ibid. Without any evidence of harm caused by the
format of the mailings, these are “bare procedural viola-
tion[s], divorced from any concrete harm.” Spokeo, 578
U. S., at 341. That does not suffce for Article III standing.
8
8
The District Court and the Court of Appeals concluded that Ramirez
(in addition to the other 8,184 class members) had standing as to those
two claims. In this Court, TransUnion has not meaningfully contested
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Opinion of the Court
The plaintiffs separately argue that TransUnion's format-
ti
ng violations created a risk of future harm. Specifcally,
the plaintiffs contend that consumers who received the infor-
mation in this dual-mailing format were at risk of not learn-
ing about the OFAC alert in their credit fles. They say that
they were thus at risk of not being able to correct their
credit fles before TransUnion disseminated credit reports
containing the misleading information to third-party busi-
nesses. As noted above, the risk of future harm on its own
does not support Article III standing for the plaintiffs' dam-
ages claim. In any event, the plaintiffs made no effort here
to explain how the formatting error prevented them from
contacting TransUnion to correct any errors before mislead-
ing credit reports were disseminated to third-party busi-
nesses. To reiterate, there is no evidence that “a single
other class member so much as opened the dual mailings,”
“nor that they were confused, distressed, or relied on the
information in any way.” 951 F. 3d, at 1039, 1041 (opinion
of McKeown, J.).
For its part, the United States as amicus curiae, but not
the plaintiffs, separately asserts that the plaintiffs suffered a
concrete “informational injury” under several of this Court's
precedents. See Federal Election Comm'n v. Akins, 524
U. S. 11 (1998); Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491
U. S. 440 (1989). We disagree. The plaintiffs did not allege
that they failed to receive any required information. They
argued only that they received it in the wrong format.
Therefore, Akins and Public Citizen do not control here. In
addition, those cases involved denial of information subject
to public-disclosure or sunshine laws that entitle all members
of the public to certain information. This case does not in-
volve such a public-disclosure law. See Casillas v. Madison
Avenue Assocs., Inc., 926 F. 3d 329, 338 (CA7 2019); Trichell
v. Midland Credit Mgmt., Inc., 964 F. 3d 990, 1004 (CA11
Ramirez's individual standing as to those two claims. We have no reason
or basis to disturb the lower courts' conclusion on Ramirez's individual
standing as to those two claims.
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Thomas, J., dissenting
2020). Moreover, the plaintiffs have identifed no “down-
stream
consequences” from failing to receive the required
information. Trichell, 964 F. 3d, at 1004. They did not
demonstrate, for example, that the alleged information def-
cit hindered their ability to correct erroneous information
before it was later sent to third parties. An “asserted infor-
mational injury that causes no adverse effects cannot
satisfy Article III.” Ibid.
***
No concrete harm, no standing. The 1,853 class members
whose credit reports were provided to third-party busi-
nesses suffered a concrete harm and thus have standing as to
the reasonable-procedures claim. The 6,332 class members
whose credit reports were not provided to third-party busi-
nesses did not suffer a concrete harm and thus do not have
standing as to the reasonable-procedures claim. As for the
claims pertaining to the format of TransUnion's mailings,
none of the 8,185 class members other than the named plain-
tiff Ramirez suffered a concrete harm.
We reverse the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit and remand the case for further proceed-
ings consistent with this opinion. In light of our conclusion
about Article III standing, we need not decide whether Ram-
irez's claims were typical of the claims of the class under
Rule 23. On remand, the Ninth Circuit may consider in the
frst instance whether class certifcation is appropriate in
light of our conclusion about standing.
It is so ordered.
Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Breyer, Justice
Sotomayor, and Justice Kagan join, dissenting.
TransUnion generated credit reports that erroneously
fagged many law-abiding people as potential terrorists and
drug traffckers. In doing so, TransUnion violated several
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443
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provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that
entitle
consumers to accuracy in credit-reporting procedures;
to receive information in their credit fles; and to receive a
summary of their rights. Yet despite Congress' judgment
that such misdeeds deserve redress, the majority decides
that TransUnion's actions are so insignifcant that the Con-
stitution prohibits consumers from vindicating their rights
in federal court. The Constitution does no such thing.
I
For decades, the Treasury Department's Offce of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC) has compiled a list of “Specially Des-
ignated Nationals.” The list largely includes terrorists and
drug traffckers, among other unseemly types. And, as a
general matter, Americans are barred from doing business
with those listed. In the wake of the September 11 attacks,
TransUnion began to sell a new (and more expensive) type
of credit report that fagged whether an individual's name
matched a name found on that list.
The system TransUnion used to decide which individuals
to fag was rather rudimentary. It compared only the con-
sumer's frst and last name with the names on the OFAC list.
If the names were identical or similar, TransUnion included
in the consumer's report an “OFAC ADVISOR ALERT,” ex-
plaining that the consumer's name matches a name on the
OFAC database. See, e. g., 951 F. 3d 1008, 1017, 1019 (CA9
2020) (“ `Cortez' would match with `Cortes' ”). TransUnion
did not compare birth dates, middle initials, Social Security
numbers, or any other available identifer routinely used to
collect and verify credit-report data. Id., at 1019, n. 2.
In 2005, a consumer sued. TransUnion had sold an OFAC
credit report about this consumer to a car dealership. The
report fagged her—Sandra Jean Cortez, born in May 1944—
as a match for a person on the OFAC list: Sandra Cortes
Quintero, born in June 1971. TransUnion withheld this
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444 TRANSUNION
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Thomas, J., dissenting
OFAC alert from the credit report that Cortez had re-
quested.
And despite Cortez's efforts to have the alert re-
moved, TransUnion kept the alert in place for years.
After a trial, the jury returned a verdict in the consumer's
favor on four FCRA claims, two of which are similar to
claims at issue here: (1) TransUnion failed to follow reason-
able procedures that would ensure maximum possible ac-
curacy, 15 U. S. C. § 1681e(b); and (2) TransUnion failed to
provide Cortez all information in her fle despite her re-
quests, § 1681g(a). See Cortez v. Trans Union, LLC, 617
F. 3d 688, 696–706 (CA3 2010). The jury awarded $50,000 in
actual damages and $750,000 in punitive damages, and it also
took the unusual step of including on the verdict form
a handwritten note urging TransUnion to “completely re-
vam[p]” its business practices. App. to Brief for Respond-
ent 2a. The District Court reduced the punitive damages
award to $100,000, which the Third Circuit affrmed on ap-
peal, stressing that TransUnion's failure to, “at the very
least, compar[e] birth dates when they are available,” was
“reprehensible.” 617 F. 3d, at 723.
But TransUnion “made surprisingly few changes” after
this verdict. 951 F. 3d, at 1021. It did not begin comparing
birth dates. Or middle initials. Or citizenship. In fact,
TransUnion did not compare any new piece of information.
Instead, it hedged its language saying a consumer was a
“ `potential match' ” rather than saying the person was a
“ `match.' ” Ibid. And instead of listing matches for similar
names, TransUnion required that the frst and last names
match exactly. Unsurprisingly, these reports kept fagging
law-abiding Americans as potential terrorists and drug traf-
fckers. And equally unsurprising, someone else sued.
That brings us to this case. Sergio Ramirez visited a car
dealership, offered to buy a car, and negotiated the terms.
The dealership then ran a joint credit check on Ramirez and
his wife. The salesperson said that the check revealed that
Ramirez was on “ `a terrorist list,' ” so the salesperson re-
fused to close the deal with him. Id., at 1017.

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Thomas, J., dissenting
Ramirez requested and received a copy of his credit report
from
TransUnion. The report purported to be “complete
and reliable,” but it made no mention of the OFAC alert.
See App. 88–91. TransUnion later sent a separate “ `cour-
tesy' ” letter, which informed Ramirez that his “TransUnion
credit report” had “been mailed to [him] separately.” Id., at
92. That letter informed Ramirez that he was a potential
match to someone in the OFAC database, but it never re-
vealed that any OFAC information was present on his credit
report. See id., at 92–94. TransUnion opted not to include
with this letter a description of Ramirez's rights under the
FCRA or any information on how to dispute the OFAC
match. 951 F. 3d, at 1018. The letter merely directed
Ramirez to visit the Department of Treasury's website or
to call or write TransUnion if Ramirez had any additional
questions or concerns.
Ramirez sued, asserting three claims under the FCRA:
TransUnion willfully failed to follow reasonable procedures
to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information
concerning him, § 1681e(b); TransUnion willfully failed to
disclose to him all the information in his credit fle by with-
holding the true version of his credit report, § 1681g(a)(1);
and TransUnion willfully failed to provide a summary of
rights when it sent him the courtesy letter, § 1681g(c)(2).
Ramirez also sought to represent a class of individuals who
had received a similar OFAC letter from TransUnion.
“[E]veryone in the class: (1) was falsely labeled . . . a poten-
tial OFAC match; (2) requested a copy of his or her credit
report from TransUnion; and (3) in response, received a
credit-report mailing with the OFAC alert redacted and a
separate OFAC Letter mailing with no summary of rights.”
Id., at 1022.
The jury found in favor of the class on all three claims. And
because it a lso deter mi ned that TransUni on's mis-
conduct was “willfu[l],” § 1681n(a), the jury awarded each class
member $984.22 in statutory damages (about $8 million total)
and $6,353.08 in punitive damages (about $52 million total).
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TransUnion appealed, arguing that the class members
lacked
standing. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, explaining
that “TransUnion's reckless handling of OFAC information
exposed every class member to a real risk of harm to their
concrete privacy, reputational, and informational interests
protected by the FCRA.” Id., at 1037.
1
II
A
Article III vests “[t]he judicial Power of the United
States” in this Court “and in such inferior Courts as the Con-
gress may from time to time ordain and establish.” § 1.
This power “shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity,
arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United
States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under
their Authority.” § 2 (emphasis added). When a federal
court has jurisdiction over a case or controversy, it has a
“virtually unfagging obligation” to exercise it. Colorado
River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U. S.
800, 817 (1976).
The mere fling of a complaint in federal court, however,
does not a case (or controversy) make. Article III “does not
extend the judicial power to every violation of the constitu-
tion” or federal law “which may possibly take place.”
Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 405 (1821). Rather, the
power extends only “to `a case in law or equity,' in which a
right, under such law, is asserted.” Ibid. (emphasis added).
Key to the scope of the judicial power, then, is whether an
individual asserts his or her own rights. At the time of the
founding, whether a court possessed judicial power over an
action with no showing of actual damages depended on
1
TransUnion also contends that Ramirez's claims and defenses are not
typical of those of the class. The Court declines to reach that question
because its jurisdictional holding is dispositive. Ante, at 442. In my
view, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in certifying the class
given the similarities among the claims and defenses at issue.
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whether the plaintiff sought to enforce a right held privately
by
an individual or a duty owed broadly to the community.
See Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330, 344–346 (2016)
(Thomas, J., concurring); see also Thole v. U. S. Bank N. A.,
590 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2020) (same); 3 W. Blackstone, Com-
mentaries on the Laws of England 2 (J. Chitty ed. 1826); 4
id., at 5. Where an individual sought to sue someone for a
violation of his private rights, such as trespass on his land,
the plaintiff needed only to allege the violation. See Entick
v. Carrington, 2 Wils. K. B. 275, 291, 95 Eng. Rep. 807, 817
(K. B. 1765). Courts typically did not require any showing
of actual damage. See Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 592 U. S.
–––, ––– – ––– (2021). But where an individual sued based
on the violation of a duty owed broadly to the whole commu-
nity, such as the overgrazing of public lands, courts required
“not only injuria [legal injury] but also damnum [damage].”
Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 346 (Thomas, J., concurring) (citing Rob-
ert Marys's Case, 9 Co. Rep. 111b, 112b, 77 Eng. Rep. 895,
898–899 (K. B. 1613); brackets in original).
This distinction mattered not only for traditional common-
law rights, but also for newly created statutory ones. The
First Congress enacted a law defning copyrights and gave
copyright holders the right to sue infringing persons in order
to recover statutory damages, even if the holder “could not
show monetary loss.” Muransky v. Godiva Chocolatier,
Inc., 979 F. 3d 917, 972 (CA11 2020) (Jordan, J., dissenting)
(citing Act of May 31, 1790, § 2, 1 Stat. 124–125). In the pat-
ent context, a defendant challenged an infringement suit
brought under a similar law. Along the lines of what Trans-
Union argues here, the infringer contended that “the making
of a machine cannot be an offence, because no action lies,
except for actual damage, and there can be no actual dam-
ages, or even a rule for damages, for an infringement by
making a machine.” Whittemore v. Cutter, 29 F. Cas. 1120,
1121 (No. 17,600) (CC Mass. 1813). Riding circuit, Justice
Story rejected that theory, noting that the plaintiff could sue
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Thomas, J., dissenting
in federal court merely by alleging a violation of a private
r
ight: “[W]here the law gives an action for a particular act,
the doing of that act imports of itself a damage to the party”
because “[e]very violation of a right imports some damage.”
Ibid.; cf. Gayler v. Wilder, 10 How. 477, 494 (1851) (patent
rights “did not exist at common law”).
2
The principle that the violation of an individual right gives
rise to an actionable harm was widespread at the founding,
in early American history, and in many modern cases. See
Uzuegbunam, 592 U. S., at ––– – ––– (collecting cases); Ha-
vens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U. S. 363, 373 (1982)
(“[T]he actual or threatened injury required by Art. III may
exist solely by virtue of statutes creating legal rights, the
invasion of which creates standing ” (citing cases; brackets
and internal quotation marks omitted)). And this under-
standing accords proper respect for the power of Congress
and other legislatures to defne legal rights. No one could
seriously dispute, for example, that a violation of property
rights is actionable, but as a general matter, “[p]roperty
2
The “public rights” terminology has been used to refer to two different
concepts. In one context, these rights are “ `take[n] from the public' ”—
like the right to make, use, or sell an invention—and “ `bestow[ed] . . .
upon the' ” individual, like a “decision to grant a public franchise.” Oil
States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene's Energy Group, LLC, 584 U. S.
–––, ––– – ––– (2018). Disputes with the Government over these rights
generally can be resolved “outside of an Article III court.” Id., at ––– –
–––. Here, in contrast, the term “public rights” refers to duties owed
collectively to the community. For example, Congress owes a duty to all
Americans to legislate within its constitutional confnes. But not every
single American can sue over Congress' failure to do so. Only individuals
who, at a minimum, establish harm beyond the mere violation of that con-
stitutional duty can sue. Cf. Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129–130
(1922) (“Plaintiff has only the right, possessed by every citizen, to require
that the Government be administered according to law and that the public
moneys be not wasted. Obviously this general right does not entitle a
private citizen to institute in the federal courts a suit to secure by indirec-
tion a determination whether a statute, if passed, or a constitutional
amendment, about to be adopted, will be valid”).
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rights are created by the State.” Palazzolo v. Rhode Is-
l
and, 533 U. S. 606, 626 (2001). In light of this history, tradi-
tion, and common practice, our test should be clear: So long
as a “statute fxes a minimum of recovery . . . , there would
seem to be no doubt of the right of one who establishes a
technical ground of action to recover this minimum sum
without any specifc showing of loss.” T. Cooley, Law of
Torts *271.
3
While the Court today discusses the supposed
failure to show “injury in fact,” courts for centuries held that
injury in law to a private right was enough to create a case
or controversy.
B
Here, each class member established a violation of his or
her private rights. The jury found that TransUnion vio-
lated three separate duties created by statute. See App.
690. All three of those duties are owed to individuals, not to
the community writ large. Take § 1681e(b), which requires
a consumer reporting agency to “follow reasonable proce-
dures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the informa-
tion concerning the individual about whom the report
relates.” This statute creates a duty: to use reasonable pro-
cedures to assure maximum possible accuracy. And that
duty is particularized to an individual: the subject of the
report. Section 1681g does the same. It requires an
agency to “clearly and accurately disclose” to a consumer,
upon his request, “[a]ll information in the consumer's fle at
the time of the request” and to include a written “summary
of rights” with that “written disclosure.” §§ 1681g(a), (c)(2).
Those directives likewise create duties: provide all informa-
tion in the consumer's fle and accompany the disclosure with
a summary of rights. And these too are owed to a single
person: the consumer who requests the information.
3
Etymology is also a helpful guide. The word “injury” stems from the
Latin “injuria,” which combines “in” (expressing negation) and “jus”
(right, law, justice). See Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology 529 (1988).
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Were there any doubt that consumer reporting agencies
owe
these duties to specifc individuals—and not to the
larger community—Congress created a cause of action pro-
viding that “[a]ny person who willfully fails to comply” with
an FCRA requirement “with respect to any consumer is lia-
ble to that consumer.” § 1681n(a) (emphasis added). If a
consumer reporting agency breaches any FCRA duty owed
to a specifc consumer, then that individual (not all consum-
ers) may sue the agency. No one disputes that each class
member possesses this cause of action. And no one disputes
that the jury found that TransUnion violated each class
member's individual rights. The plaintiffs thus have a suf-
fcient injury to sue in federal court.
C
The Court chooses a different approach. Rejecting this
history, the majority holds that the mere violation of a
personal legal right is not—and never can be—an injury suf-
fcient to establish standing. What matters for the Court is
only that the “injury in fact be `concrete.' ” Ante, at 424.
“No concrete harm, no standing.” Ante, at 417, 442.
That may be a pithy catchphrase, but it is worth pausing to
ask why “concrete” injury in fact should be the sole inquiry.
After all, it was not until 1970—“180 years after the ratifca-
tion of Article III”—that this Court even introduced the “in-
jury in fact” (as opposed to injury in law) concept of standing.
Sierra v. Hallandale Beach, 996 F. 3d 1110, 1117 (CA11 2021)
(Newsom, J., concurring). And the concept then was not
even about constitutional standing; it concerned a statutory
cause of action under the Administrative Procedure Act.
See Association of Data Processing Service Organizations,
Inc. v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150, 153 (1970) (explaining that the
injury-in-fact requirement “concerns, apart from the `case'
or `controversy' test, the question whether the interest
sought to be protected by the complainant is arguably within
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Thomas, J., dissenting
the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the
st
atute or constitutional guarantee in question”).
The Court later took this statutory requirement and began
to graft it onto its constitutional standing analysis. See,
e. g., Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490 (1975). But even then,
injury in fact served as an additional way to get into federal
court. Article III injury still could “exist solely by virtue of
`statutes creating legal rights, the invasion of which creates
standing.' ” Id., at 500 (quoting Linda R. S. v. Richard D.,
410 U. S. 614, 617, n. 3 (1973)). So the introduction of an
injury-in-fact requirement, in effect, “represented a substan-
tial broadening of access to the federal courts.” Simon v.
Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 39
(1976). A plaintiff could now invoke a federal court's judicial
power by establishing injury by virtue of a violated legal
right or by alleging some other type of “personal interest.”
Ibid.
In the context of public rights, the Court continued to re-
quire more than just a legal violation. In Lujan v. Defend-
ers of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555 (1992), for example, the
Court concluded that several environmental organizations
lacked standing to challenge a regulation about interagency
communications, even though the organizations invoked a
citizen-suit provision allowing “ `any person [to] commence a
civil suit . . . to enjoin any person . . . who is alleged to be in
violation of ' ” the law. See id., at 558, 571–572; 16 U. S. C.
§ 1540(g). Echoing the historical distinction between duties
owed to individuals and those owed to the community, the
Court explained that a plaintiff must do more than raise “a
generally available grievance about government—claiming
only harm to his and every citizen's interest in proper appli-
cation of the Constitution and laws.” 504 U. S., at 573.
“Vindicating the public interest (including the public interest
in Government observance of the Constitution and laws) is
the function of Congress and the Chief Executive.” Id., at
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576. “ `The province of the court,' ” in contrast, “ `is, solely,
to
decide on the rights of individuals.' ” Ibid. (quoting Mar-
bury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 170 (1803)).
The same public-rights analysis prevailed in Summers v.
Earth Island Institute, 555 U. S. 488 (2009). There, a group
of organizations sought to prevent the United States Forest
Service from enforcing regulations that exempt certain proj-
ects from notice and comment. Id., at 490. The Court,
again, found that the mere violation of the law “without some
concrete interest that is affected by the deprivation—a
procedural right in vacuo—is insuffcient to create Article
III standing.” Id., at 496. But again, this was rooted in
the context of public rights: “ `It would exceed Article III's
limitations if, at the behest of Congress and in the absence
of any showing of concrete injury, we were to entertain citi-
zen suits to vindicate the public's nonconcrete interest in the
proper administration of the laws.' ” Id., at 497 (emphasis
added; brackets omitted).
In Spokeo, the Court built on this approach. Based on
a few sentences from Lujan and Summers, the Court
concluded that a plaintiff does not automatically “satisf[y]
the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a
person a statutory right and purports to authorize that per-
son to sue to vindicate that right.” Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341.
But the Court made clear that “Congress is well positioned
to identify intangible harms that meet minimum Article III
requirements” and explained that “the violation of a proce-
dural right granted by statute can be suffcient in some cir-
cumstances to constitute injury in fact.” Id., at 341, 342
(emphasis added).
Reconciling these statements has proved to be a challenge.
See Sierra, 996 F. 3d, at 1116–1117 (Newsom, J., concurring)
(collecting examples of inconsistent decisions). But “[t]he
historical restrictions on standing ” offer considerable guid-
ance. Thole, 590 U. S., at ––– (Thomas, J., concurring). A
statute that creates a public right plus a citizen-suit cause of
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Thomas, J., dissenting
action is insuffcient by itself to establish standing. See
Lujan
, 504 U. S., at 576.
4
A statute that creates a private
right and a cause of action, however, does gives plaintiffs an
adequate interest in vindicating their private rights in fed-
eral court. See Thole, 590 U. S., at ––– (Thomas, J., concur-
ring); Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 344 (same); see also Muransky,
979 F. 3d, at 970–972 (Jordan, J., dissenting); Huff v. Tele-
Check Servs., Inc., 923 F. 3d 458, 469 (CA6 2019) (“Arti-
cle III standing may draw a line between private and public
rights”); Bryant v. Compass Group USA, Inc., 958 F. 3d,
617, 624 (CA7 2020) (the Spokeo concurrence “drew a useful
distinction between two types of injuries”).
The majority today, however, takes the road less traveled:
“[U]nder Article III, an injury in law is not an injury in
fact.” Ante, at 11; but see Webb v. Portland Mfg. Co.,
29 F. Cas. 506, 508 (No. 17,322) (CC Me. 1838) (“The law tol-
erates no farther inquiry than whether there has been
the violation of a right”). No matter if the right is per-
sonal or if the legislature deems the right worthy of legal
protection, legislatures are constitutionally unable to offer
the protection of the federal courts for anything other
than money, bodily integrity, and anything else that this
Court thinks looks close enough to rights existing at com-
mon law. See ante, at 425. The 1970s injury-in-fact theory
has now displaced the traditional gateway into federal
courts.
This approach is remarkable in both its novelty and effects.
Never before has this Court declared that legal injury is
4
But see Caminker, Comment, The Constitutionality of Qui Tam Ac-
tions, 99 Yale L. J. 341, 342, n. 3 (1989) (“Six statutes [enacted by the First
Congress] imposed penalties and/or forfeitures for conduct injurious to the
general public and expressly authorized suits by private informers, with
the recovery being shared between the informer and the United States”);
McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 317, 321–322 (1819) (reviewing “an
action of debt brought by the defendant in error . . . who sued as well for
himself as for the State of Maryland . . . to recover certain penalties”).
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inherently insuffcient to support standing.
5
And
never be-
fore has this Court declared that legislatures are constitu-
tionally precluded from creating legal rights enforceable in
federal court if those rights deviate too far from their
common-law roots. According to the majority, courts alone
have the power to sift and weigh harms to decide whether
they merit the Federal Judiciary's attention. In the name
of protecting the separation of powers, ante, at 422–423, 429,
this Court has relieved the legislature of its power to create
and defne rights.
III
Even assuming that this Court should be in the business
of second-guessing private rights, this is a rather odd case
to say that Congress went too far. TransUnion's misconduct
here is exactly the sort of thing that has long merited legal
redress.
As an initial matter, this Court has recognized that the
unlawful withholding of requested information causes “a suf-
fciently distinct injury to provide standing to sue.” Public
Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U. S. 440, 449 (1989);
see also Havens Realty Corp., 455 U. S., at 374. Here,
TransUnion unlawfully withheld from each class member the
OFAC version of his or her credit report that the class mem-
ber requested. And TransUnion unlawfully failed to send a
summary of rights. The majority's response is to contend
5
See, e. g., Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 578 (1992)
(“Nothing in this contradicts the principle that the injury required by
Art. III may exist solely by virtue of `statutes creating legal rights, the
invasion of which creates standing ” (internal quotation marks, brackets,
and ellipsis omitted)); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 514 (1975) (“Congress
may create a statutory right or entitlement the alleged deprivation of
which can confer standing to sue even where the plaintiff would have
suffered no judicially cognizable injury in the absence of statute”); Linda
R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 617, n. 3 (1973) (“Congress may enact
statutes creating legal rights, the invasion of which creates standing, even
though no injury would exist without the statute”).
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Thomas, J., dissenting
that the plaintiffs actually did not allege that they failed to
receive
any required information; they alleged only that they
received it in the “wrong format.” Ante, at 441.
That reframing fnds little support in the complaint, which
alleged that TransUnion “fail[ed] to include the OFAC alerts
. . . in the consumer's own fles which consumers, as of right,
may request and obtain,” and that TransUnion did “not ad-
vise consumers that they may dispute inaccurate OFAC
alerts.” Class Action Complaint in No. 3:12–cv–00632, ECF
Doc. 1 (ND Cal.), p. 5. It also fnds no footing in the record.
Neither the mailed credit report nor separate letter provide
any indication that a person's report is marked with an
OFAC alert. See, e. g., App. 88–94.
Were there any doubt about the facts below, we have the
helpful beneft of a jury verdict. The jury found that “De-
fendant TransUnion, LLC willfully fail[ed] to clearly and
accurately disclose OFAC information in the written disclo-
sures it sent to members of the class.” Id., at 690. And
the jury found that “Defendant TransUnion, LLC willfully
fail[ed] to provide class members a summary of their FCRA
rights with each written disclosure made to them.” Ibid.
I would not be so quick as to recharacterize these jury fnd-
ings as mere “formatting ” errors. Ante, at 418, 440; see also
U. S. Const., Amdt. 7 (“no fact tried by a jury, shall be other-
wise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than
according to the rules of the common law”).
Moreover, to the extent this Court privileges concrete,
fnancial injury for standing purposes, recall that Trans-
Union charged its clients extra to receive credit reports with
the OFAC designation. According to TransUnion, these
special OFAC credit reports are valuable. Even the major-
ity must admit that withholding something of value from
another person—that is, “monetary harm”—falls in the
heartland of tangible injury in fact. Ante, at 417, 425.
Recognizing as much, TransUnion admits that its clients
would have standing to sue if they, like the class members,
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did not receive the OFAC credit reports they had requested.
Tr
. of Oral Arg. 9.
And then there is the standalone harm caused by the
rather extreme errors in the credit reports. The majority
(rightly) decides that having one's identity falsely and publi-
cally associated with terrorism and drug traffcking is itself a
concrete harm. Ante, at 432–433. For good reason. This
case is a particularly grave example of the harm this Court
identifed as central to the FCRA: “curb[ing] the dissemina-
tion of false information.” Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 342. And
it aligns closely with a “harm that has traditionally been re-
garded as providing a basis for a lawsuit.” Id., at 341.
Historically, “[o]ne who falsely, and without a privilege to do
so, publishes matter defamatory to another in such a manner
as to make the publication a libel is liable to the other,” even
though “no special harm or loss of reputation results there-
from.” Restatement of Torts § 569, p. 165 (1938).
The question this Court has identifed as key, then, is
whether a plaintiff established “a degree of risk” that is “suf-
fcient to meet the concreteness requirement.” Spokeo, 578
U. S., at 343. Here, in a 7-month period, it is undisputed
that nearly 25 percent of the class had false OFAC-fags sent
to potential creditors. Twenty-fve percent over just a 7-
month period seems, to me, “a degree of risk suffcient to
meet the concreteness requirement.” Ibid. If 25 percent
is insuffcient, then, pray tell, what percentage is?
The majority defects this line of analysis by all but elimi-
nating the risk-of-harm analysis. According to the majority,
an elevated risk of harm simply shows that a concrete harm
is imminent and thus may support only a claim for injunctive
relief. Ante, at 435, 441. But this reworking of Spokeo
fails for two reasons. First, it ignores what Spokeo said:
“[Our opinion] does not mean . . . that the risk of real harm
cannot satisfy the requirement of concreteness.” Spokeo,
578 U. S., at 341. Second, it ignores what Spokeo did. The
Court in Spokeo remanded the respondent's claims for statu-
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457
Thomas, J., dissenting
tory damages to the Ninth Circuit to consider “whether the
.
. . violations alleged in this case entail a degree of risk
suffcient to meet the concreteness requirement.” Id., at
342–343. The theory that risk of harm matters only for in-
junctive relief is thus squarely foreclosed by Spokeo itself.
But even if risk of harm is out, the Ninth Circuit indicated
that every class member may have had an OFAC alert dis-
closed. According to the court below, TransUnion not only
published this information to creditors for a quarter of the
class but also “communicated about the database information
and OFAC matches” with a third party. 951 F. 3d, at 1026;
cf. Cortez, 617 F. 3d, at 711 (TransUnion cannot avoid FCRA
liability “by simply contracting with a third party to store
and maintain information”). Respondent adds to this by
pointing out that TransUnion published this information to
vendors that printed and sent the mailings. See Brief for
Respondent 16; see also App. 161 (deposition testimony ex-
plaining that “a printed credit report . . . would have been
sent through our print vendor through the mail and deliv-
ered to the consumer requesting the fle disclosure); id., at
545 (trial testimony identifying three different print-vendor
companies that worked with TransUnion during the relevant
time period). In the historical context of libel, publication
to even a single other party could be enough to give rise to
suit. This was true, even where the third party was a tele-
graph company,
6
an attorney,
7
or a stenographer who merely
6
Munson v. Lathrop, 96 Wis. 386, 389, 71 N. W. 596, 597 (1897) (“The
writing of the message, and the delivery of it by him to the [telegraph]
company for transmission, as mentioned, was a publication of the same”).
7
Hedgepeth v. Coleman, 183 N. C. 309, 312–313, 111 S. E. 517, 519 (1922)
(“[I]t has been held that the publication was suffcient where the defendant
had communicated the defamatory matter to the plaintiff 's agent, or attor-
ney; or had read it to a friend before posting it to the plaintiff; or had
procured it to be copied, or sealed in the form of a letter addressed to the
plaintiff and left in the house of a neighbor by whom it was read; or had
caused it to be delivered to and read by a member of the plaintiff 's
family”).

458 TRANSUNION
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Thomas, J., dissenting
writes the information down.
8
Surely
with a harm so
closely paralleling a common-law harm, this is an instance
where a plaintiff “need not allege any additional harm
beyond the one Congress has identifed.” Spokeo, 578 U. S.,
at 342 (emphasis deleted).
But even setting aside everything already mentioned—the
Constitution's text, history, precedent, fnancial harm, libel,
the risk of publication, and actual disclosure to a third
party—one need only tap into common sense to know that
receiving a letter identifying you as a potential drug traf-
fcker or terrorist is harmful. All the more so when the in-
formation comes in the context of a credit report, the entire
purpose of which is to demonstrate that a person can be
trusted.
And if this sort of confusing and frustrating communica-
tion is insuffcient to establish a real injury, one wonders
what could rise to that level. If, instead of falsely identify-
ing Ramirez as a potential drug traffcker or terrorist, Trans-
Union had fagged him as a “potential” child molester, would
that alone still be insuffcient to open the courthouse doors?
What about falsely labeling a person a racist? Including a
slur on the report? Or what about openly reducing a per-
son's credit score by several points because of his race? If
none of these constitutes an injury in fact, how can that pos-
sibly square with our past cases indicating that the inability
8
Rickbeil v. Grafton Deaconess Hospital, 74 N. D. 525, 542 (1946) (“We
hold that the dictating of this letter by the manager to the stenographer
and her transcription of her notes into the written instrument constitutes
publication within the purview of the law of libel: whether the relationship
be that of master and servant or of coemployees of a corporation”); see
also Larimore v. Blaylock, 259 Va. 568, 573, 528 S. E. 2d 119, 122 (2000)
(rejecting an argument of “absolute protection of the `intracorporate im-
munity doctrine' ” for defamatory statements); but see Swindle v. State,
10 Tenn. 581, 582 (1831) (“ `A personal libel is published when it arrives to
the person against whom it is written, pursuant to the design of the au-
thor, or is made known to any other person, by any means to which the
dissent of the author is not necessarily implied' ” (emphasis added)).
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to “observe an animal species, even for purely esthetic pur-
poses,
. . . undeniably” is? Lujan, 504 U. S., at 562; see
also Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental
Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U. S. 167, 183 (2000) (“plaintiffs
adequately allege injury in fact when they aver that they
use the affected area and are persons for whom the aesthetic
and recreational values of the area will be lessened” (internal
quotation marks omitted)); Summers, 555 U. S., at 494 (“[I]f
. . . harm in fact affects the recreational or even the mere
esthetic interests of the plaintiff, that will suffce”). Had the
class members claimed an aesthetic interest in viewing an
accurate report, would this case have come out differently?
And if some of these examples do cause suffciently “con-
crete” and “real”—though “intangible”—harms, how do we
go about picking and choosing which ones do and which do
not? I see no way to engage in this “inescapably value-
laden” inquiry without it “devolv[ing] into [pure] policy judg-
ment.” Sierra, 996 F. 3d, at 1129 (Newsom, J., concurring).
Weighing the harms caused by specifc facts and choosing
remedies seems to me like a much better ft for legislatures
and juries than for this Court.
Finally, it is not just the harm that is reminiscent of a
constitutional case or controversy. So too is the remedy.
Although statutory damages are not necessarily a proxy for
unjust enrichment, they have a similar favor in this case.
TransUnion violated consumers' rights in order to create and
sell a product to its clients. Reckless handling of consumer
information and bungled responses to requests for informa-
tion served a means to an end. And the end was fnancial
gain. “TransUnion could not confrm that a single OFAC
alert sold to its customers was accurate.” 951 F. 3d, at 1021,
n. 4. Yet thanks to this Court, it may well be in a position
to keep much of its ill-gotten gains.
9
9
Today's decision might actually be a pyrrhic victory for TransUnion.
The Court does not prohibit Congress from creating statutory rights for
consumers; it simply holds that federal courts lack jurisdiction to hear
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***
Ulti
mately, the majority seems to pose to the reader a
single rhetorical question: Who could possibly think that a
person is harmed when he requests and is sent an incomplete
credit report, or is sent a suspicious notice informing him
that he may be a designated drug traffcker or terrorist, or
is not sent anything informing him of how to remove this
inaccurate red fag? The answer is, of course, legion: Con-
gress, the President, the jury, the District Court, the Ninth
Circuit, and four Members of this Court.
I respectfully dissent.
Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Breyer and
Justice Sotomayor join, dissenting.
The familiar story of Article III standing depicts the
doctrine as an integral aspect of judicial restraint. The
case-or-controversy requirement of Article III, the account
runs, is “built on a single basic idea—the idea of separation
of powers.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 752 (1984).
Rigorous standing rules help safeguard that separation by
keeping the courts away from issues “more appropriately ad-
dressed in the representative branches.” Id., at 751. In so
doing, those rules prevent courts from overstepping their
“proper—and properly limited—role” in “a democratic
society.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 498 (1975); see ante,
at 448–449 (Thomas, J., dissenting).
some of these cases. That combination may leave state courts—which
“are not bound by the limitations of a case or controversy or other federal
rules of justiciability even when they address issues of federal law,”
ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 617 (1989)—as the sole forum for
such cases, with defendants unable to seek removal to federal court. See
also Bennett, The Paradox of Exclusive State-Court Jurisdiction Over
Federal Claims, 105 Minn. L. Rev. 1211 (2021). By declaring that federal
courts lack jurisdiction, the Court has thus ensured that state courts will
exercise exclusive jurisdiction over these sorts of class actions.
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Kagan, J., dissenting
After today's decision, that story needs a rewrite. The
Cour
t here transforms standing law from a doctrine of judi-
cial modesty into a tool of judicial aggrandizement. It holds,
for the frst time, that a specifc class of plaintiffs whom Con-
gress allowed to bring a lawsuit cannot do so under Article
III. I join Justice Thomas's dissent, which explains why
the majority's decision is so mistaken. As he recounts, our
Article III precedents teach that Congress has broad “power
to create and defne rights.” Ante, at 454; see Spokeo, Inc.
v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330, 341 (2016); Lujan v. Defenders of
Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 578 (1992); Warth, 422 U. S., at 500.
And Congress may protect those rights by authorizing suits
not only for past harms but also for the material risk of
future ones. See Spokeo, 578 U. S., at 341–343; ante, at 456–
457 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Under those precedents, this
case should be easy. In the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Con-
gress determined to protect consumers' reputations from in-
accurate credit reporting. TransUnion willfully violated
that statute's provisions by preparing credit fles that falsely
called the plaintiffs potential terrorists, and by obscuring
that fact when the plaintiffs requested copies of their fles.
To say, as the majority does, that the resulting injuries did
not “ `exist' in the real world” is to inhabit a world I don't
know. Ante, at 426. And to make that claim in the face
of Congress's contrary judgment is to exceed the judiciary's
“proper—and properly limited—role.” Warth, 422 U. S., at
498; see ante, at 453–454 (Thomas, J., dissenting).
I add a few words about the majority's view of the risks
of harm to the plaintiffs. In addressing the claim that
TransUnion failed to maintain accurate credit fles, the ma-
jority argues that the “risk of dissemination” of the plaintiffs'
credit information to third parties is “too speculative.”
Ante, at 438. But why is it so speculative that a company in
the business of selling credit reports to third parties will in
fact sell a credit report to a third party? See also ante, at
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456 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (noting that “nearly 25 percent
of
the class” already had false reports “sent to potential cred-
itors”). And in addressing the claims of faulty disclosure to
the plaintiffs, the majority makes a set of curious assump-
tions. According to the majority, people who specifcally re-
quest a copy of their credit report may not even “open[ ]”
the envelope. Ante, at 440 (emphasis in original). And
people who receive multiple opaque mailings are not likely
to be “confused.” Ibid.; but see Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 593
U. S. 155, 170 (2021) (explaining that a “series of letters,”
“each containing a new morsel of vital information,” is likely
to perplex recipients). And fnally, people who learn that
their credit fles label them potential terrorists would not
“have tried to correct” the error. Ante, at 440. Rather
than accept those suppositions, I sign up with Justice
Thomas: “[O]ne need only tap into common sense to know
that receiving a letter identifying you as a potential drug
traffcker or terrorist is harmful.” Ante, at 458.
I differ with Justice Thomas on just one matter, unlikely
to make much difference in practice. In his view, any “viola-
tion of an individual right” created by Congress gives rise
to Article III standing. Ante, at 448. But in Spokeo, this
Court held that “Article III requires a concrete injury even
in the context of a statutory violation.” 578 U. S., at 341.
I continue to adhere to that view, but think it should lead to
the same result as Justice Thomas's approach in all but
highly unusual cases. As Spokeo recognized, “Congress is
well positioned to identify [both tangible and] intangible
harms” meeting Article III standards. Ibid. Article III
requires for concreteness only a “real harm” (that is, a harm
that “actually exist[s]”) or a “risk of real harm.” Ibid. And
as today's decision defnitively proves, Congress is better
suited than courts to determine when something causes a
harm or risk of harm in the real world. For that reason,
courts should give deference to those congressional judg-
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Kagan, J., dissenting
ments. Overriding an authorization to sue is appropriate
when
but only when Congress could not reasonably have
thought that a suit will contribute to compensating or pre-
venting the harm at issue. Subject to that qualifcation, I
join Justice Thomas's dissent in full.
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