Courts Want ‘Actual Facts’ in Pixel Tracking Cases, Lawyer Says
While many Meta Pixel privacy suits contain “dramatic” pleadings, a recently issued district court decision is “grounding these cases back in reality,” said Troutman Amin lawyer Keerti Jaya in a blog post Wednesday.
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In many cases, “every click is suddenly ‘sensitive,’ every page view becomes ‘confidential medical information,’ and every analytics tool is framed as a surveillance device,” she said. But Wright v. TrueCare "is one of those moments where the court steps in and says, very calmly: show me the actual facts.”
Case 3:25-cv-00786 in the Southern District of California centered on a plaintiff who visited a healthcare site six times; each time, the Meta Pixel logged an event, the blog post said. The plaintiff “relied on broad statements about ‘private and confidential health information’” in her pleadings, instead of alleging specific protected health information (PHI) and searches the pixel transmitted.
Though “courts used to tolerate that level of generality at the pleading stage,” that’s no longer true, Jaya said. “Judge [James] Simmons makes it clear: in 2025, if you’re going to call something PHI, you need to show the PHI. Not the possibility of it. Not the fear of it. Your actual data.”
The ruling was “not anti-privacy,” nor did it minimize "digital tracking concerns.” Instead, “it’s a reality check in the best way!”
This same logic can be applied in California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) cases, she said.
“What Wright shows us is that Pixel cases aren’t going anywhere, but courts will only entertain the ones that bring real specificity,” Jaya said. Things like screenshots, URLs and identified search terms "matter,” as plaintiffs “can’t rely on the technology sounding invasive; they have to show how it was invasive for them.” When they do not, “judges aren’t going to carry it over the finish line out of sympathy for the broader privacy debate.”