The Supreme Court on Friday put new limits on who can sue a credit reporting agency for falsely labeling them a potential terrorist, ruling that only those whose reports were sent to a business have standing to sue in federal court.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a strong dissent, joined by the court’s liberal justices, arguing Congress gave consumers a legal right to sue over false credit reports.The decision overturns most of a $40-million judgment against TransUnion for a bungled scheme to add “alerts” to names that matched those of terrorists, drug traffickers or others who appeared on the Treasury Department’s watch list.
The revelation led to a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 8,185 people who had such false information in their credit files in violation of their Fair Credit Reporting Act. Thomas insisted nothing in the Constitution prevents the affected parties from having their cases heard in court.“In the name of protecting the separation of powers, this court has relieved the legislature of its power to create and define rights,” Thomas wrote. “Even assuming that this court should be in the business of second-guessing private rights, this is a rather odd case to say that Congress went too far.
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