Federal Court Cases

On September 4, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the affiliate sharing provision under the California Financial Information Privacy Act ("SB1") is not preempted by the FACT Act amendments to the federal FCRA. The Eastern District of California previously ruled that no portion of the SB1 affiliate sharing provision survives FACT Act preemption and even if some applications could be saved, they cannot be severed from the remainder of the statute. Reversing the district court's decision, the Ninth Circuit noted that the state legislature would prefer a narrowed version of the provision to none at all. The matter was remanded back to the trial court without instructions.