Report from USA Today
In Brief – The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical of broadly applying the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) to modern online advertising. The 1988 law prohibits video stores from disclosing the rental history of customers. Online privacy advocates have attempted to use VPPA lawsuits in lieu of federal privacy legislation to impose harsh penalties on websites engaged with targeted ad networks. Some federal courts have ruled against the VPPA applying to online advertising networks, while others have ruled it does, often clashing over definitional questions such as who qualifies as a “consumer”. The Supreme Court accepted a case involving Michael Salazar, who sued Paramount over Facebook advertising tracking tools on a Paramount website where he watched free sports clips. Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether interpreting the statute to cover targeted advertising data sharing would extend beyond Congress’s original intent to protect video-viewing privacy. Paramount’s attorney argued that imposing massive penalties on websites that participate on targeted advertising could undermine the business model that makes much of the internet freely accessible to users, while Salazar’s attorney argued that hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties was commensurate with how many people have their online activity tapped by ad networks.
Context – VPPA class action lawsuits are not the only litigation tool used to try to shut down targeted advertising. In California, plaintiffs often allege violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), the state’s pre-internet wiretap law. In 2025, District Judge Vince Chhabria threw out one such claim, and in doing so, described CIPA as “a total mess” and called for California lawmakers to rewrite it. This year, they began that process, enacting SB 690 to eliminate the private right of action against websites alleged to violate the laws provision against pen register and trap and trace devices, a provision that has been heavily used by plaintiffs against websites that deploy standard cookies, pixels, and similar advertising technologies.