• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 19, 2025

The National Basketball Association has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling reviving claims that the group violated a Reagan-era video privacy law by embedding Meta Platforms' analytics tool, the Meta Pixel, on NBA.com.

That decision, issued last year by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, “strikes at the core of the targeted advertising model,” the sports organization writes in a petition filed with the Supreme Court.

“The Court’s intervention is needed to prevent the Second Circuit’s decision from turning a statute about videotape rentals into the end of Internet advertising,” the group adds.

The sports organization's petition comes in a battle dating to 2022, when California resident Michael Salazar alleged in a class-action complaint that the National Basketball Association violated the federal video privacy law by sharing his personally identifiable viewing history at NBA.com with Facebook, via the Meta Pixel -- analytics code that automatically transmits information about website visitors.

The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), passed by Congress in 1988 after a Maryland store disclosed the video rental history of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork to a newspaper, prohibits video rental companies from disclosing personally identifiable information about consumers' viewing history without their permission. Though the law predates the modern internet, judges across the country have said the statute covers streaming video services. But other questions about the law's applicability to online services -- including whether people who watch free videos are "consumers" -- are still being debated in trial courts.

U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Rochon in the Southern District of New York dismissed Salazar's complaint, ruling that he wasn't a “subscriber” to NBA.com because the site didn't require registration to access videos. The video privacy statute defines “consumer” as a “renter, purchaser, or subscriber” of services from a video tape service provider.

Salazar appealed, arguing that he was covered by the law because he had signed up for an online NBA newsletter that offered links to videos on NBA.com.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the lawsuit, ruling that web users who provide personal information in exchange for contrent are consumers.”

“The VPPA is no dinosaur statute,” Circuit Judge Beth Robinson wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Reena Raggi and Eunice Lee.

“Congress deployed broad language in defining the term 'consumer,' showing it did not intend for the VPPA to gather dust next to our VHS tapes,” the judges added.

The National Basketball Association is now asking the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of that ruling, arguing that the decision “threatens to blow open the federal courthouse doors to all manner of lawsuits over trivialities, all while jeopardizing the data-use practices that make so much of the Internet free, accessible, and useful to consumers.”

The group argues in its petition that other federal courts have said business-to-business disclosures, such as the ones Salazar alleges, don't create the kind of injury that gives people “standing” to sue in federal court.

The sports group also argues that Salazar shouldn't have been considered a consumer for purposes of the video privacy law.

A Supreme Court ruling regarding the scope of the video privacy law could affect a broad array of lawsuits against web companies that offer streaming video. A different federal judge in New York already indicated he will require NBC to face a similar lawsuit, due to the 2nd Circuit's ruling against the National Basketball Association.