• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday

For the second time in as many months, a federal appellate court in New York has ruled that web companies don't violate the federal video privacy law by sharing information about people's video-viewing history with Meta Platforms, via its pixel tracking code.

The ruling "effectively shut the door" to Video Privacy Protection Act claims based on disclosures to Meta via the pixel, the appellate judges said in the decision, issued Friday by a panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling came in a class-action complaint by Brandon Hughes against the National Football League.

Hughes claimed NFL.com violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by allegedly disclosing consumers' Facebook IDs, combined with the videos they viewed, to Meta.

The video privacy law, passed during the Reagan-era, prohibits "video tape service providers" from disclosing consumers' personally identifiable video-viewing history, without their consent.

In the last three years, numerous web users throughout the country have sued a range of businesses offering video clips -- including newspapers, television companies and other streaming video providers -- for allegedly violating that law by embedding analytics tools like the Meta Pixel on their websites.

U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Rochon in New York dismissed Hughes' suit against the National Football League in September 2024, ruling that even if the allegations in his complaint were true, they wouldn't establish that NFL.com violated the privacy law.

She specifically ruled that a company is only a "video tape service provider" if it offers prerecorded videos, and that Hughes failed to allege in the complaint that he viewed prerecorded content on NFL.com.

Hughes then appealed to the 2nd Circuit, which also ruled in favor of the National Football League, but for other reasons.

A three-judge panel of that court ruled that the data allegedly sent to Meta about Hughes was not "personally identifiable" because it wouldn't allow an "ordinary person" to identify Hughes and learn which videos he watched.

The new ruling comes around seven weeks after the same court ruled in favor of Flipps Media TrillerTV in a similar lawsuit brought by Detrina Solomon.

She alleged that TrillerTV violated the video privacy law by sharing her Facebook ID with Meta Platforms, via its pixel.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit said in that case that the term "personally identifiable information" means "information that would allow an ordinary person to identify a consumer's video-watching habits, but not information that only a sophisticated technology company could use to do so."

Solomon recently asked the 2nd Circuit to reconsider that ruling, arguing that it creates a loophole to the video privacy law. That request is still pending.