Supreme Court tosses Facebook appeal in shareholder lawsuit arising from Cambridge Analytica data breach
Source: CBS News
November 22, 2024 / 10:27 AM EST
Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Facebook's appeal of a lower court order reviving a shareholder lawsuit brought against the social media giant in light of consulting firm Cambridge Analytica's 2015 misuse of millions of Facebook users' data. In its first opinion of the term, the high court issued a one-line unsigned decision dismissing Facebook's appeal. The court's ruling indicates it believes it should not have taken up the case, though the Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning.
In tossing the appeal, the Supreme Court leaves in place a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in favor of Facebook shareholders. They had filed a securities fraud lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly misleading them in financial filings about the risks stemming from the massive data breach by Cambridge Analytica.
The case involved what information publicly traded companies must disclose in the "risk factors" section of their annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and specifically, whether they're obligated to share risks that materialized in the past, even if those events don't present ongoing or future business harm. The dispute stems from a class action lawsuit that arose out of the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica's misuse of Facebook user data in 2015.
Cambridge Analytica had purchased data collected through a personality quiz on Facebook and used it to create psychological profiles of U.S. voters to assist GOP Sen. Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign. While Cambridge Analytica said in the wake of the scandal that it deleted the data from Facebook, it was reported in 2018 that the firm had lied. Instead, it kept the information and used it to help then-candidate Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-tosses-facebook-appeal-shareholder-lawsuit-cambridge-analytica-data-breach/
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