Michael Rhodes, a Cooley partner/photo by Jason Doiy

Zoom Video Communications has turned to Cooley's Michael Rhodes to defend the video conferencing app against two lawsuits alleging the company unlawfully funneled user data to Facebook.

The lawsuits, filed earlier this week in the Northern District of California, are among the first to sue under the California Consumer Privacy Act, which went into effect Jan. 1. Wexler Wallace and Tycko & Zavareei brought the two separate lawsuits claiming that San Jose-based Zoom used Facebook's software development kits, which send personally identifiable information to the social media company, without the consent and notices outlined in the CCPA and Facebook's own policies.

Rhodes, Cooley's global chairman of the firm's cyber, data, privacy and internet practice groups, has defended Silicon Valley giants in other major privacy litigation. The San Francisco-based attorney represented Facebook in the biometrics case over its "tag suggestions" facial recognition feature and helped negotiate a proposed $550 million settlement in the litigation.

In 2016, Rhodes signed on as counsel for Niantic Inc., the maker of augmented reality video game Pokémon Go, over public nuisance claims. He also stepped in for Google in a lawsuit that claimed its Gmail platform violated privacy protections by mining emails.

Rhodes, who declined to comment, is joined on the cases by Cooley's Evan Slovak, Joseph Mornin, Kathleen Hartnett and Travis LeBlanc.

The lawsuits come in the wake of a Motherboard article reporting that the iOS version of the Zoom app transfers data to Facebook, a feature that Zoom said it has since deleted in an update.

Since then, The Intercept launched an investigation into Zoom's end-to-end encryption claims, and, on Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked the company about its security protocols as companies and Americans around the country turn to Zoom to stay connected amid shelter-in-place orders.