iDuchess here with my first official CIPAWorldpost! We have a case coming out of the Northern District of California in Jane Doe v. Regents of the University of California (UC Regents). The Plaintiff is making claims against both the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) but we are only going to dig into the CIPA complaint. The claim is against UC Regents which operates the University of California San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) where the plaintiff was a patient.
Plaintiff claims that UCSF uses Meta pixels on their site and when the plaintiff entered their email, which happens to be the same as their Facebook account, into the “MyChart” portal they later began to receive targeted advertisements specific to their medical conditions. Plaintiff claims that UC Regent intentionally added the pixel to the UCSF website “…disclosing and allowing Meta to intercept the plaintiff’s and class members’ data, including highly sensitive medical information.” Compl. ¶ 31. This is where Plaintiff alleges that the CIPA violation occurred and that UC Regent “aiding Meta in misappropriating her private medical information”.
Plaintiff alleges the violations fell under Cal. Pen Code § 631. UC Regent argues that they do not fall under the definition of “Person” under CIPA rather they are a public entity.
631. (a) Any person who, by means of any machine, instrument, or contrivance, or in any other manner, intentionally taps, or makes any unauthorized connection, whether physically, electrically, acoustically, inductively, or otherwise, with any telegraph or telephone wire, line, cable, or instrument, including the wire, line, cable, or instrument of any internal telephonic communication system, or who willfully and without the consent of all parties to the communication, or in any unauthorized manner, reads, or attempts to read, or to learn the contents or meaning of any message, report, or communication while the same is in transit or passing over any wire, line, or cable, or is being sent from, or received at any place within this state; or who uses, or attempts to use, in any manner, or for any purpose, or to communicate in any way, any information so obtained, or who aids, agrees with, employs, or conspires with any person or persons to unlawfully do, or permit, or cause to be done any of the acts or things mentioned above in this section
Currently, the California Supreme Court does not have a ruling as to whether public entities are immune from CIPA. Plaintiff argued that CIPA applies to any other entity aside from public utilities. However, the Court found that in the California Supreme Court ruling of Wells v. One2One Learning Foundation that the “[A]bsent express words to the contrary, governmental agencies are not included within the general words of a statute.” The Court goes on to state that “Because the text of CIPA does not expressly include liability for public entities, I find that UC Regents is immune from liability under CIPA.” The Court granted the motion to dismiss with prejudice, leaving the defendant with a win against the CIPA claim.
