(NASHVILLE, Tenn.)–The Liberty Justice Center has filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court in Salazar v. Paramount Global, urging the Court to uphold the constitutional privacy rights of all Americans. This case revolves around the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). No matter how the Court interprets the VPPA and the statutory rights it enumerates, the fundamental right to privacy must be protected.
Michael Salazar has been a subscriber to 247Sports.com, an online sports newsletter owned by Paramount Global, since 2022. Mr. Salazar was logged into his Facebook account while accessing content on 247Sports.com which allegedly allowed Paramount to transmit his personal viewing data and digital identifiers to Facebook without his consent.
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee ruled that, despite being a subscriber to 247Sports.com at the time he was accessing content, Salazar is not considered a “consumer” of “goods or services from a video tape service provider” and so is not covered by the act’s protection of video privacy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed this decision, adding that they “break with the Second and Seventh Circuits’ approach to this issue.” This has created a circuit split with notably different approaches in “almost identical case[s].” Salazar then petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States for review.
The Liberty Justice Center’s amicus brief argues that, no matter how the Court interprets the statutory rights enumerated in the VPPA, the Court must protect Americans’ constitutional right to privacy in the digital sphere. Companies are collecting, storing and aggregating vast troves of data that can reveal an individual’s most intimate interests, beliefs and associations. The VPPA itself may or may not recognize a broad definition of “consumer”; regardless of the specifics of the VPPA, Mr. Salazar is owed his constitutional right to privacy. The Court should keep the constitutional rights and digital data privacy interests of the American people in mind when deciding this case.
The Liberty Justice Center has long defended this cherished right, filing Scholl v. Illinois State Police and writing amicus briefs for Page v. Comey and Chatrie v. United States to challenge sweeping government surveillance.
“Ever-growing aggregations of consumer information create ever-greater privacy challenges,” said Reilly Stephens, Senior Counsel and Director of Amicus Practice for the Liberty Justice Center. “We hope that the Supreme Court addresses these issues with the seriousness they deserve, and respects the rights of Americans in their personal data.”
The Liberty Justice Center is asking the Supreme Court to protect the digital privacy interests of all Americans as the fundamental, constitutional right that it is.
The Liberty Justice Center’s amicus brief in Salazar v. Paramount Global can be found here.