It is well established that a plaintiff seeking to invoke federal jurisdiction must have “standing” under Article III of the U.S. Constitution. To satisfy this “irreducible constitutional minimum,” a plaintiff must demonstrate, inter alia, an “injury in fact,” i.e. one that is both “concrete and particularized.”1 In May 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins,2 considered whether a violation of a statutory right granted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was a sufficient injury in fact to maintain an action in federal court. As discussed herein, the court determined that if such injury is both “particularized” and “concrete,” standing is present.
In the aftermath of Spokeo, the district courts have been faced with a multitude of cases seeking to clarify the bounds of the Supreme Court’s standing analysis. This article examines Spokeo and surveys several post-Spokeo cases dealing with consumers’ standing to sue for “procedural” violations under consumer protection statutes, particularly the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). For this, it is informative to begin with a deconstruction of Spokeo to better understand what, if anything, Spokeo changed regarding Article III standing.
The Spokeo Decision
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