Spokeo has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a proposed class action accusing the people-search company of using consumers' “teaser” profiles to advertise paid subscriptions without their consent. A federal court has given initial approval to the deal, which sets up separate settlement funds for residents of nine states who say their information was used without permission.
According to Bloomberg Law News, the proposed class action alleges Spokeo used consumer teaser profiles to advertise paid subscriptions without consumers' consent. Plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary settlement approval in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and the court has since signed off on that initial approval. Under the arrangement, members of each subclass will receive a pro rata share of that state's settlement fund, the outlet reports.
The settlement would resolve right-of-publicity claims under laws in Alabama, California, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada, Ohio, South Dakota, and Washington, according to For the People. The site notes the settlement includes separate funds broken out by state rather than a single pooled payout, meaning the amount available to any individual claimant will depend on which state's subclass they belong to.
A Case Years in the Making
The deal caps off a legal fight that stretches back several years. As reported by Law360, Spokeo reached the $10 million preliminary settlement with a group of plaintiffs from nine states alleging their right to publicity was violated. That framing tracks with earlier rulings in the underlying case, Kellman et al. v. Spokeo, Inc.
On April 19, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied Spokeo's motion to dismiss in that case. The court concluded the plaintiffs' claims were actionable, including claims involving rights of publicity and appropriation of names and likenesses under California, Ohio, and Indiana law — a ruling on the viability of the claims at that stage, not a finding that Spokeo had broken the law.
Two years later, in 2024, Judge William H. Orrick certified a class of Californians and another class of Ohioans, totaling 275,000 individuals, per the same account from For the People. That certification set the stage for the broader, multi-state settlement now before the court, which expands well beyond the two originally certified classes.
Part of a Wider Fight Over Public Data
The teaser-profile case isn't the only legal battle Spokeo is currently fighting over how it handles consumer information. In a separate federal lawsuit detailed by Law360, Spokeo and other people-search platforms have argued that a Connecticut law requiring deletion of online profiles singles out companies that publish publicly available material and imposes “draconian penalties” for speech. That dispute is unrelated to the teaser-profile settlement but reflects the broader legal pressure data-aggregation companies are facing over how they collect, display, and monetize personal information pulled from public records.
For now, the teaser-profile settlement remains in its preliminary stage, having cleared initial court approval. The case was covered by Bloomberg Law News staff correspondent Christopher Brown.
