Vermont judge weighs jurisdiction claims in lawsuit against Clearview AI

The judge in a lawsuit filed by Vermont against Clearview AI over its collection of state residents’ face biometrics needs some time to consider the defendant’s claim that it should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

State Judge Daniel Richardson agreed with the argument of Clearview’s attorney that the company is not conducting business in the state in the normal sense of having contacted, contracted with or taken information directly from people in the state, MLex reports. But a recent case in which California’s data protection laws were found applicable to ecommerce site Shopify or another suit in Vermont involving Meta could provide a more useful precedence, a state attorney argued.

Judge Richardson noted that in both cases, the businesses had consumers in the state interacting with them directly. He will consider how the pre-digital standards for minimum contact and purposeful availment apply in the current case.

“Even looking at Meta, which I think moves the ball significantly forward in how we understand jurisdiction in an e-commerce or internet age, there’s still some underlying traditional principles of contact that I want to look a little bit closer at,” Richardson said, as quoted by MLex.

The lawsuit is Vermont’s third try at suing Clearview, filed earlier this year just as the company was settling multi-district litigation over biometric data privacy in federal court.  That settlement entitles the consumer class to a 23 percent stake in proceeds from a sale of the facial recognition company, but did not give state Attorneys General injunctive relief, and was opposed by 22 AGs.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark alleges Clearview violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act, and seeks an injunction forcing the company to delete its data, as well as restitution for consumers and civil penalties. Clearview filed its motion to dismiss the suit in June.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  Clearview AI  |  data protection  |  face biometrics  |  lawsuits  |  Vermont