• by Wendy Davis , July 18, 2025

A California resident who visited Motorola Mobility's website can proceed with a privacy lawsuit against the company over allegations that it failed to honor his request to reject tracking cookies.

In a ruling issued July 14, U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar in the Northern District of California essentially found that if the allegations in the lawsuit were proven true, they could support a finding that Motorola violated California's wiretap law and several other privacy-related claims.

The ruling stems from a December 2024 class-action complaint by Jonathan Gabrielli, who alleged that he visited Motorola's site several times in 2022 and 2023, was greeted with a banner that gave him the option to avoid tracking, and clicked on a link that said "Click Here to Reject All non-essential cookies.”

Motorola nonetheless allowed third parties -- including Google, TikTok, Amazon and others -- to set tracking cookies on his browser, he alleged in the complaint.

"Defendant’s website offers consumers a choice to browse without being tracked, followed, and targeted by third party data brokers and advertisers," he alleged in the complaint. "However, defendant’s promises are outright lies, designed to lull users into a false sense of security."

The complaint included an allegation that Motorola violated a California wiretap law and that it engaged in "intrusion upon seclusion" -- a claim that can be brought in California over some privacy violations.

Motorla urged Tigar to dismiss the lawsuit at an early stage for several reasons. Among others, Motorla said the allegations in the complaint, even if proven true, wouldn't show that the company intentionally allowed third parties to set tracking cookies.

Motorola added that the "common sense" explanation for the allegations was that the "reject all" option on the cookie banner had malfunctioned.

"The mere existence of the 'Reject All' button shows that Motorola intended for non-essential cookies to cease firing once a website visitor clicked the 'Reject All' button, and believed that is what was happening," the company wrote in papers filed with Tigar in March.

It added in papers filed in April that common sense "would infer, if not confirm, that the button’s existence was intended to ensure plaintiff could customize his browsing experience."

"To accept plaintiff’s argument, one would have to accept that Motorola put a fake button in place with no intention that it would work," Motorola wrote. "In this era of robust data privacy laws and litigation, the logical conclusion absent the pleading of nefarious conduct by a large and sophisticated company, would be that any alleged reject button malfunction was the result of a bona fide error or mistake."

Tigar rejected Motorola's argument for now on the grounds that it "raised a factual dispute" that couldn't be resolved at this early stage of the litigation.