• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 8, 2025

Siding with LinkedIn, a federal judge has dismissed a claim that the company's analytics tool wrongly collected information from the California Department of Motor Vehicles' website.

The decision, issued late last week by U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts in the Northern District of California, comes in a class-action complaint brought by Jacqueline Jackson. She alleged that LinkedIn, through its Insight Tag, gathered her name, birthdate, email address and information about her disability when she used a Department of Motor Vehicles site to renew her placard.

Jackson's complaint included a claim that LinkedIn violated the federal Drivers' Privacy Protection Act -- a 1994 federal statute that prohibits anyone from knowingly obtaining personal information from a motor vehicle record for an improper purpose.

Pitts ruled hat Jackson's allegations, even if proven true, wouldn't show that LinkedIn obtained information from a motor vehicle record.

“Although Jackson has plausibly alleged that her personal information was transmitted to LinkedIn via the Insight Tag, she has not adequately alleged that this personal information came from a motor vehicle record,” he wrote. “Nearly all of the personal information that Jackson alleges was transmitted to LinkedIn came from Jackson herself.”

Jackson also claimed that LinkedIn violated a California privacy law. Pitts didn't dismiss that claim, but left open the possibility of doing so in the future.

The lawsuit is one of numerous actions brought by consumers who allege that tech companies' analytics tools violate various privacy laws.

Meta and Google have also been sued for specifically violating the federal Drivers' Privacy Protection Act.

In 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston in the Northern District of California rejected Meta's bid to dismiss of a lawsuit alleging that the company ran afoul of that law by collecting information from the California Department of Motor Vehicles' website.

But last year a different judge -- U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Gordon in Nevada --threw out a similar lawsuit against Meta.