• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

A federal judge has thrown out Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's claims that Roku wrongly disclosed users' video-viewing history to tech companies via analytics tools, but allowed the state to proceed with claims that the streaming platform violated a federal children's privacy law.

In a ruling issued this week, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Murphy, III in the Eastern District of Michigan effectively said Nessel wasn't in a position to charge Roku with violations of federal and state video-privacy laws. Instead, Murphy ruled, only state residents could sue over those claims.

Murphy did not dismiss charges that company violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, noting that the statute allows attorneys general to bring enforcement actions.

The decision came in a lawsuit brought by Nessel last year, when she alleged that Roku collected data from children younger than 13, and disclosed information about video-viewing history of users of all ages.

The complaint included claims that Roku violated the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (and related state laws) by allegedly sharing personally identifiable video-viewing data with other tech companies such as Google and Meta via tracking technology.

Roku urged Murphy to dismiss those video-privacy charges for several reasons, including that Nessel lacked "standing" to proceed. The company argued in a July filing that Nessel's claims regarding violations of video-privacy laws represented an attempt "to usurp residents' damages claims."

Murphy sided with Roku on that point and dismissed those counts of the complaint without prejudice -- meaning the claims theoretically could be brought again.

Nessel also claimed that Roku violated the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits companies from knowingly collecting personal data from children younger than 13 -- including their locations, IP addresses, persistent identifiers, and voice recordings -- without parental consent.

The complaint included allegations that Roku gathers personal data from children who watch programs on the “Kids and Family” section, which offers content like “Ryan's World,” featuring influencer Ryan Kaji removing toys from their boxes.

“When children access content by first navigating to Kids and Family on The Roku Channel -- one of many child-directed sections of the platform -- Roku collects their personal information without parental notice and consent and uses that information to deliver targeted behavioral advertising to children on Roku platform pages,” the attorney general alleged.

The complaint also alleged that Roku “collects and allows third parties to collect the personal information of children watching third-party channels when those third parties fail to identify their content as directed to children.”

Roku has said the claims are meritless.

"We do not use or disclose children’s personal information for targeted advertising or any other purpose prohibited by law, nor do we partner with third-party web trackers or data brokers to sell children’s personal information," a company spokesperson previously told MediaPost.