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November 12, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A pair of motorists filed a proposed class action in a California federal court alleging that a data collection company’s automated license plate recognition (ALPR) system violates state privacy laws by indiscriminately collecting drivers’ vehicle and location data, aggregating the information into searchable databases that allow law enforcement to track individuals’ movements without a warrant and failing to implement a legally required usage and privacy policy.
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November 10, 2026
LOS ANGELES — Days after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the federal government’s emergency application to require California to segregate mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters, the United States filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in its pending California federal court challenge, stating that “the relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available—rendering voluntary dismissal necessary because there is no longer Article III jurisdiction.”
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November 10, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A petition for a writ of certiorari filed by a former Fox News journalist who was held in contempt of court for refusing to reveal a source in civil litigation has drawn support from amici curiae ranging from senators to press freedom organizations, which all urge the high court to grant review of the case concerning the reporter’s privilege.
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November 10, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling denying a motion to compel arbitration by a corporation that operates a video streaming service in a putative class action alleging that it violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by disclosing a user’s personally identifiable information (PII) to a third-party company, agreeing with the lower court that the streaming service failed to show the formation of an arbitration agreement.
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November 10, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge granted final approval to a $2.95 million settlement resolving consolidated class action litigation over a cannabis retailer’s alleged failure to safeguard customers’ sensitive information, including government-issued identification documents, medical cannabis cards and purchase histories, which hackers allegedly leaked on the dark web and offered for sale following a 2024 ransomware attack.
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November 10, 2026
CHICAGO — A consumer filed a putative class action against a robotics company in an Illinois state court, alleging that its sidewalk delivery robots violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by scanning customers’ facial and hand geometry without notice or consent, retaining the data without a publicly available retention and destruction policy and sharing it with third parties, including OpenAI, to train artificial intelligence models.
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November 10, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of five consolidated putative class actions brought by a retired West Virginia law enforcement officer against businesses accused of unlawfully disclosing his personal information, holding that a provision of West Virginia’s Daniel’s Law restricting the disclosure of home addresses and unpublished telephone numbers of judicial and law enforcement officials violates the First and 14th amendments because it is a content-based restriction on speech that fails strict scrutiny.
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November 06, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Dozens of complaints have been filed in California federal court by anonymous plaintiffs claiming that Apple Inc.’s “AirTag” tracking devices were used to stalk them in violation of their rights to privacy, California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws after class certification was denied and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPMDL) ordered that the cases be centralized in a multidistrict litigation.
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November 03, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 2 denied the federal government’s emergency application to require California to segregate mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters identified as suspected noncitizens pending verification of their citizenship, leaving in place a Ninth Circuit ruling that federal law prohibiting noncitizen voting does not preempt California’s election procedures and that the government failed to establish irreparable harm.
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October 29, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia federal judge denied a motion for a preliminary injunction and stay filed by a collection of 22 states, two governors and the District of Columbia seeking to preliminarily enjoin the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) from disclosing sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers and immigration status, for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients, holding that the plaintiffs failed to show a likelihood of Article III standing and failed to demonstrate irreparable harm.
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October 28, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel reversed and remanded a Texas federal judge’s dismissal of a putative class action alleging that an eyewear retailer shared customers’ individually identifiable health information (IIHI) with Meta Platforms Inc. through website tracking technology, finding that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that their prescription eyewear searches and eye examination scheduling disclosed identifiable health information to Meta without their consent, constituting an injury sufficient to establish Article III standing.
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October 28, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge granted summary judgment to federal employee unions and current and former federal employees on their Administrative Procedure Act (APA) claims challenging the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) access to sensitive personnel records maintained by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), finding that OPM violated the Privacy Act by granting DOGE agents broad access to records containing personally identifiable information (PII) without a demonstrated need and failed to adhere to established cybersecurity safeguards, but reserved a determination on whether permanent injunctive relief is warranted.
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October 27, 2026
SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge granted final approval of a $2.5 million class action settlement resolving claims against a legal services firm arising from a 2024 data breach that allegedly compromised the personal information of tens of thousands of individuals, finding the settlement fair, reasonable and adequate and dismissing the action with prejudice.
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October 23, 2026
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota federal judge granted final approval to a $1.05 million settlement resolving consolidated class action litigation against an accounting and business consulting firm over a September 2023 data breach that allegedly compromised the sensitive personal information of more than 85,000 individuals.
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October 23, 2026
PHOENIX — An Arizona federal judge granted final approval to a $3.03 million privacy class action settlement with LifeStance Health Group Inc., including more than $1 million in attorney fees, after previously denying preliminary approval of an earlier agreement over concerns about inadequate settlement valuation, disproportionate attorney fees and potential collusion.
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October 22, 2026
SANTA FE, N.M. — After a jury decided on liability in a suit brought by the New Mexico attorney general against Meta Platforms Inc., a state court judge on Oct. 21 assessed a $25 billion penalty against Meta, which operates the social media platform Facebook, finding 43,899,720 willful violations of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act by deceptive trade practices and five willful violations by unconscionable trade practices related to Facebook’s privacy setting that did not give users meaningful control over their data.
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October 22, 2026
FORT MYERS, Fla. — A data privacy putative class action survived a motion to dismiss after a Florida federal judge found that the alleged publication of the wife’s personal information on the dark web and her husband’s efforts to mitigate the resulting risk of identity theft sufficiently allege injury.
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October 20, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — In a supplemental brief filed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there was a search in a geofence warrant case and remanded for the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to address other issues, the government reiterates its arguments that the warrant “satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and particularity” and “the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule precludes suppression.”
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October 16, 2026
SEATTLE — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed an Idaho federal judge’s decision to dismiss a putative class action brought by individuals whose personal information was disclosed by a health insurance administration company to unauthorized parties after determining that the unauthorized disclosure of protected health information is a concrete injury.
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October 16, 2026
DETROIT — A Michigan bank agreed to pay $31.5 million — including $10.5 million in attorney fees, $311,690.80 in litigation costs and monetary relief and credit monitoring for class members — in a class action settlement after the bank experienced two cyberattacks resulting in data breaches impacting more than 2.18 million employees and customers whose data was compromised.
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October 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Video Privacy Protection Act’s (VPPA) reach is not limited to video-related services, the attorney representing a California man who brought a putative class complaint regarding data sharing against Paramount Global under the VPPA argued Oct. 14 before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case debating the meaning of “consumer” under the act.
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October 14, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge on Oct. 13 granted a motion for final approval of a $68 million settlement resolving class claims against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. (collectively Google) for allegedly eavesdropping on Google Assistant (GA) users in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and privacy laws and granted the plaintiffs’ motion for more than $22 million in attorney fees but reduced the named plaintiffs’ service awards.
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October 14, 2026
TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida judge granted final approval of a data privacy settlement in which a nationwide waxing provider has agreed to pay up to $5 million — including one-third of the gross total for class attorney fees, as well as payments to class representatives and members — after third parties allegedly accessed client information without the clients’ consent in violation of federal and state laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
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October 13, 2026
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Washington Privacy Act (WPA) doesn’t prohibit Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH) from using Meta Platforms Inc. technology to track the searches and clicks of users of the SCH public website and SCH’s automated responses and from sharing that data with Meta to create targeted ads, the Washington Supreme Court majority ruled in a putative class lawsuit brought by website users.
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October 13, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in the District of Columbia set aside and vacated a policy under which the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been demanding voter registration lists from states, comparing those lists against citizen databases and then urging states to remove voters it deems ineligible, opining that the policy “flies in the face of duly enacted laws designed to protect Americans.”