Facebook sign at night. Facebook headquarters. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM

Facebook Inc. is seeking to take up an early appeal in the privacy litigation stemming from the social media platform's Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

The company's lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher on Tuesday filed court papers asking U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California, who is overseeing the multidistrict litigation, to allow the company to appeal his ruling denying Facebook's motion to dismiss to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Facebook's lawyers contend that plaintiffs' claims of a privacy injury alone aren't enough to establish the concrete harm necessary to establish standing to sue in federal court.

"The question whether alleged data privacy violations give rise to Article III standing is an evolving issue of increasing importance that already has drawn considerable attention from the nation's appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court," wrote Facebook's lawyers. In particular, Facebook's lawyers cited a recent Supreme Court decision to remand a settlement in a case accusing Google of disclosing search terms without user consent to consider the plaintiffs' standing.

"Because there is a serious threshold question about Plaintiffs' standing to sue, the Ninth Circuit should have an opportunity to address that question before the parties undertake 'protracted and expensive' litigation over the Plaintiffs' claims in this nationwide MDL," wrote Facebook's lawyers.

Chabbria largely denied the company's motion to dismiss the multidistrict litigation in September and found that the plaintiffs privacy claims had established standing to sue in federal court.

"To say that a 'mere' privacy invasion is not capable of inflicting an 'actual injury' serious enough to warrant the attention of the federal courts is to disregard the importance of privacy in our society, not to mention the historic role of the federal judiciary in protecting it," Chhabria wrote. "The alleged injury is 'concrete' largely for the reasons already discussed—if you use a company's social media platform to share sensitive information with only your friends, then you suffer a concrete injury when the company disseminates that information widely," he wrote.

A Facebook representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Lesley Weaver of Bleichmar Fonti & Auld and Derek Loeser of Keller Rohrback, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in the case, had no comment on the filing.

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