Cruz-Alvarez & Stamps Todd: Supreme Court Observations on Transunion v. Ramirez
On June 25, 2021, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the most highly-anticipated case of this term for class action practitioners. This 5-4 decision can largely be considered favorable for class action defendants, though it has the potential to make some defendants wary of what they’ve wished for.
As discussed in more detail in Washington Legal Foundation’s amicus brief and our prior blog post about the case, this class action stemmed from TransUnion’s practice of designating individuals as a “potential match” to a Name Screen Alert on the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) List—a list consisting of terrorists, drug traffickers, and other serious criminals with whom it is generally unlawful to do business. TransUnion compared only first and last names before placing this “potential match” designation on an individual’s credit report, unsurprisingly leading to false positives for thousands of law-abiding individuals. The named plaintiff was denied the ability to purchase a vehicle at a car dealership because this designation appeared on his credit report. Mailings he subsequently requested and received from TransUnion contained formatting errors.
