Supreme Court VPPA Case Salazar v. Paramount: Argument Preview

Supreme Court VPPA Case Salazar v. Paramount: Argument Preview

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459, on October 14, 2026. The single question is who counts as a "consumer" under the Video Privacy Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. 2710, a 1988 statute that plaintiffs now invoke in website tracking class actions. No decision has issued.

Information last verified on October 10, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: The Supreme Court granted certiorari on January 26, 2026 and has set Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459, for oral argument on Wednesday, October 14, 2026. As of October 10, 2026 that argument has not yet taken place and the Court has issued no decision.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. 2710, and the pending U.S. Supreme Court case Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459. It does not cover state video-privacy, wiretap or consumer-protection statutes, and it does not address claims outside the VPPA.

What Happened

Michael Salazar filed a putative class action against Paramount Global in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in September 2022, No. 3:22-cv-00756, before Judge Eli J. Richardson. He pleaded a single count under the VPPA.

Salazar alleged that he signed up for the online newsletter of 247Sports.com, a Paramount-owned site covering college sports recruiting, by supplying his email address, and that he then watched videos on the site while logged into his Facebook account. He alleged that a Facebook tracking pixel on 247Sports.com sent Facebook his Facebook ID together with the names and URLs of the videos he watched, without his consent. Those are allegations in a complaint, tested at the pleading stage, not findings of fact.

In July 2023 the district court held that Salazar had Article III standing but dismissed the complaint with prejudice for failure to state a claim, reasoning that a VPPA plaintiff must subscribe to goods or services "in the nature of audio-video content." Salazar v. Paramount Global, 683 F. Supp. 3d 727, 743 n.23 (M.D. Tenn. 2023).

A divided Sixth Circuit panel affirmed on April 3, 2025. Judge Nalbandian wrote for the court, joined by Judge Batchelder; Judge Bloomekatz dissented from the judgment and from all but the standing portion of the opinion. The panel agreed Salazar had standing, then held he was not a "consumer" because the newsletter was not audiovisual. It also held the district court did not abuse its discretion by dismissing with prejudice, because Salazar never filed a motion to amend or a proposed amended complaint and asked for leave only in a footnote.

The majority was explicit about the consequences:

"In doing so, we break with the Second and Seventh Circuits' approach to this issue." Source: Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 23-5748, slip op. at 11 (6th Cir. Apr. 3, 2025)

The dissent was equally direct that the text resolved the case the other way:

"By this provision's plain text, Salazar is a 'consumer' under the VPPA." Source: Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 23-5748, slip op. at 15 (6th Cir. Apr. 3, 2025) (Bloomekatz, J., dissenting)

Rehearing was denied on May 13, 2025. Salazar petitioned for certiorari on October 10, 2025, after Justice Kavanaugh extended his deadline. The Court granted the petition on January 26, 2026. The docket records a plain grant, with no limitation on, or addition to, the single question Salazar presented.

One sequencing detail is worth noting. The NBA had already asked the Court to review the Second Circuit's contrary decision, in a petition captioned National Basketball Association v. Salazar, No. 24-994. The Court denied that petition on December 8, 2025, then granted Salazar's petition from the Sixth Circuit seven weeks later. It gave no reasons for either order.

The merits briefs are complete: Salazar's opening brief on April 17, 2026, Paramount's brief on June 23, 2026, and Salazar's reply on July 23, 2026. The docket entry setting the case for argument on Wednesday, October 14, 2026 is dated August 4, 2026. The Court requested the record from the Sixth Circuit on August 13 and received the district court record on August 20, 2026. The October 2026 argument calendar, amended September 14, 2026, lists Salazar v. Paramount Global as the only case argued that Wednesday, with the Court convening at 10 a.m. The docket names Joshua I. Hammack of Bailey & Glasser as counsel of record for Salazar and Paul D. Clement of Clement & Murphy as counsel of record for Paramount. No brief from the Solicitor General appears on the docket as of October 10, 2026.

The question presented, drafted by Salazar's counsel and reproduced verbatim on the Court's docket, frames the dispute in one sentence:

"The question here is whether the phrase 'goods or services from a video tape service provider,' as used in the VPPA's definition of 'consumer,' refers to all of a video tape service provider's goods or services or only to its audiovisual goods or services." Source: Question Presented, Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459 (U.S. Oct. 10, 2025), reproduced on the Court's docket

Paramount's merits brief states the question in those same words, so the issue itself is not in dispute. The rest of that framing is the petitioner's advocacy rather than a finding: it asserts that Paramount is a "video tape service provider" and that the disclosed Facebook ID and viewing history count as "personally identifiable information," adding that both courts below assumed as much. The Sixth Circuit did assume the first point, expressly without deciding it, at slip op. 7 n.7. So the question presented asks who may sue, not whether pixel tracking violates the statute.

What the Law Actually Says

Congress passed the VPPA in 1988 after a journalist obtained Judge Robert Bork's video rental list from his local video store and published it during his Supreme Court confirmation fight. The statute was enacted as Public Law 100-618 on November 5, 1988 and amended once, by Public Law 112-258 on January 10, 2013.

The liability rule is a single sentence. Section 2710(b)(1) makes a "video tape service provider who knowingly discloses, to any person, personally identifiable information concerning any consumer of such provider" liable to the aggrieved person. Everything in this case turns on the definitions that feed that sentence.

Section 2710(a)(1) defines the protected class in a single clause:

"the term 'consumer' means any renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider" Source: 18 U.S.C. 2710(a)(1) (2024 ed.)

Two neighboring definitions do the rest of the work. Section 2710(a)(4) defines "video tape service provider" as any person engaged in the business of the "rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials," language that courts have applied to internet streaming through the words "similar" and "delivery." Section 2710(a)(3) says "personally identifiable information" "includes information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services from a video tape service provider."

Read together, as the Sixth Circuit put it, a VPPA plaintiff must plead three things: that the defendant is a regulated entity, that the plaintiff is a protected consumer, and that the defendant knowingly disclosed the plaintiff's personally identifiable information. Only the second element is in dispute here.

The statute's remedies explain why a definitional fight is worth four years of litigation and a trip to the Supreme Court. Section 2710(c)(1) gives any aggrieved person a federal cause of action. Section 2710(c)(2) then provides that a court may award:

"actual damages but not less than liquidated damages in an amount of $2,500" Source: 18 U.S.C. 2710(c)(2)(A) (2024 ed.)

That is a floor, not a cap and not a guaranteed recovery. A court may also award punitive damages, reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs, and equitable relief. Claims must be brought within two years of the act complained of or its discovery under Section 2710(c)(3), and Section 2710(b)(2) lists six situations in which disclosure is permitted, including disclosure with the consumer's "informed, written consent," which the 2013 amendment allowed to be given electronically and in advance for up to two years.

Because the VPPA is a federal statute aimed at one narrow data type, it sits alongside rather than inside the rest of the privacy landscape. Our guide to the federal wiretap statutes explains how the Electronic Communications Privacy Act handles interception and stored communications, a separate regime with its own consent rules, and the broader map of US privacy statutes and regulators shows where video-viewing records fit among the state-level rules. The closest structural cousin is Illinois biometric privacy law, another privacy statute whose per-person damages floor generated a large body of class litigation over what its definitions reach. Readers who want to see a VPPA case that reached a resolution rather than a cert grant can look at the Willow TV video privacy settlement in our tracker.

Where the Courts of Appeals Disagree

Four courts of appeals have now addressed the same phrase, and they are divided two to two.

The Second Circuit decided Salazar v. NBA, 118 F.4th 533, on October 15, 2024, in a case brought by the same plaintiff. The panel held that "consumer" reaches a renter, purchaser or subscriber of any of a provider's goods or services, whether or not those goods or services are audiovisual, and that the limiting work in the statute is done by the definition of "personally identifiable information" instead. It vacated the dismissal and remanded, rejecting the argument that the law had been outrun by technology:

"The VPPA is no dinosaur statute." Source: Salazar v. NBA, 118 F.4th 533 (2d Cir. 2024), reproduced at App. 40a to the petition for certiorari in No. 24-994

The Seventh Circuit reached the same result in Gardner v. Me-TV National Limited Partnership, 132 F.4th 1022, on March 28, 2025. Judge Easterbrook's opinion first held that value can be paid in data rather than money, so a free signup that costs an email address and a zip code can still create a subscription, then addressed the audiovisual question directly:

"Nothing in the Act says that the goods or services must be video tapes or streams." Source: Gardner v. Me-TV Nat'l Ltd. P'ship, No. 24-1290, slip op. at 5 (7th Cir. Mar. 28, 2025)

The Sixth Circuit took the opposite view six days later, reading "goods or services" in the context of the surrounding definitions rather than giving each word its broadest dictionary meaning.

The D.C. Circuit then took the Sixth Circuit's side. In Pileggi v. Washington Newspaper Publishing Co., No. 24-7022, 146 F.4th 1219, decided August 12, 2025, Judge Millett wrote for a panel that affirmed dismissal of a VPPA claim brought by a reader who had signed up for the Washington Examiner's email newsletter and then watched videos on the Examiner's website, where a Meta Pixel transmitted information about those videos to Meta. The panel held that a VPPA plaintiff must allege that she "purchased, rented, or subscribed to a video cassette tape or similar audio-visual good or service," that the provider collected personally identifiable information about that audiovisual good or service, and that the information was disclosed to a third party without her consent. A footnote stated the disagreement plainly:

"For these reasons, we read the statute differently from the Second and Seventh Circuits." Source: Pileggi v. Washington Newspaper Publishing Co., 146 F.4th 1219, 1237 n.5 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 12, 2025)

Senior Circuit Judge Randolph filed a concurring opinion. The D.C. Circuit denied rehearing en banc on September 30, 2025, and Pileggi filed her own certiorari petition, No. 25-1040, which asks the Court to hold her case pending the decision in No. 25-459. That docket shows the petition distributed for the conference of May 14, 2026 and records no disposition as of October 10, 2026.

Both certiorari petitions describe the resulting alignment the same way. Salazar's petition calls the split "clear, acknowledged, and entrenched," counts it two to two, and places the Second and Seventh Circuits on one side and the Sixth and D.C. Circuits on the other.

Two cautions about the shape of this split. First, the First and Eleventh Circuits have decided a different VPPA question, whether downloading and using a video app makes a person a subscriber at all, and the Seventh Circuit expressly declined to address that question in Gardner. It is not presented here. Second, the Second and Seventh Circuit decisions are pleading-stage rulings that sent cases back for further proceedings; neither held that the defendants violated the VPPA.

What Each Side Argues

Salazar's merits brief leads with ordinary meaning and with a comparison between neighboring clauses. It argues that the unmodified phrase "includes all tangible and intangible offerings that come 'from a video tape service provider'" (Pet. Br. 10), and that Congress showed it knew how to impose an audiovisual limit when it wrote "video materials or services" in the definition of personally identifiable information in Section 2710(a)(3) while writing only "goods or services" in Section 2710(a)(1). The brief argues that the Sixth Circuit's reading drains the word "video" in Section 2710(a)(3) of work, forces the phrase "goods or services" to carry two meanings in one statute, and invites further judicial line-drawing, such as the majority's conclusion that Paramount was not "acting" as a video tape service provider when it sent a newsletter.

Paramount's brief, filed June 23, 2026, reads the three definitions as interlocking and aimed at one subject. It argues that a person becomes a consumer by transacting for the audiovisual goods or services that generate the information the statute protects, and that the structure, title, consent provisions and legislative history all point the same way:

"The law does not protect non-video transaction records from disclosure, so those transactions do not make a person a 'consumer' under the statute." Source: Brief for Respondent, Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459, at 14 (U.S. June 23, 2026)

The brief leans on the 2013 advance-consent amendment, arguing that a provision letting a consumer consent in advance for up to two years makes sense only if consumer status arises from the video transaction itself. It also argues that the opposing reading produces an administrability problem and perverse incentives, because companies would be pressed to collect and retain links between website visitors and unrelated purchases in the name of privacy compliance. Paramount characterizes the current filings as a "new wave of suits" with "hundreds of new class actions being filed every year" against businesses that post free promotional or instructional clips, citing a bar-association article; that is an advocate's characterization of the litigation landscape, not a finding by any court.

Salazar's July 23, 2026 reply brief accepts that context controls and restructures its argument to start there, contending that Paramount never offers a dictionary definition of the full phrase and instead adds a modifier the text does not contain.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The durable interest in this case is not the result. It is the fact that a statute written in 1988 about video cassette rental records is the operative federal law governing a modern web analytics practice. Litigants reach instead for the specific older federal statutes that carry private rights of action and damages floors. The VPPA is one of a small set of such statutes, and this case is what happens when one of them is asked to carry weight its drafters never measured.

In our reading, the damages structure rather than the privacy principle is what makes this definitional question worth litigating to the Supreme Court. Section 2710(c)(2)(A) lets a court award liquidated damages of not less than $2,500, and Section 2710(c)(2)(C) adds fee-shifting. Paramount's brief describes Salazar's complaint as seeking that figure for "hundreds of thousands of" putative class members. A definition that moves the boundary of the protected class by one category of signup therefore moves how many people can bring that claim. Fourteen amicus briefs from retail, media, technology and privacy organizations are on the docket.

The case also exposes a real drafting problem, visible on the face of the statute. Section 2710(a)(3) is introduced with "includes" while the other definitions use "means," an asymmetry the Sixth Circuit majority relied on to argue that the personally-identifiable-information definition is illustrative and so cannot be the statute's limiting device. Section 2710(b)(1) makes a violator liable "for the relief provided in subsection (d)," while the remedies actually sit in subsection (c) and subsection (d) is an evidentiary exclusion. Neither flaw is dispositive, and neither is anyone's fault in 2026, but together they illustrate why the text supports two coherent readings and why four courts of appeals have split rather than converged.

The question presented concerns who counts as a consumer, not whether tracking pixels violate the statute. Both courts below assumed Paramount's status and the sensitivity of the data, and neither point is part of the question presented. If the Sixth Circuit's reading controls, VPPA plaintiffs in cases built on non-video signups would need to plead a transaction for audiovisual goods or services, and pending district court cases that rest on newsletter signups would be measured against that requirement. If the broader reading controls, the case returns to the lower courts and the remaining elements, including knowing disclosure, the content of the information disclosed, and consent under Section 2710(b)(2)(B), are still open and unlitigated. Either way, the question the Seventh Circuit flagged and declined to decide, whether merely using a free video app makes someone a subscriber, is left for another case.

How This Affects You

Today the rule depends on where a case sits. Federal courts in the Second Circuit (New York, Connecticut, Vermont) and the Seventh Circuit (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin) are bound by decisions holding that a non-video subscription can make a person a VPPA consumer; federal courts in the Sixth Circuit (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee) and in the D.C. Circuit are bound by the contrary holdings in this case and in Pileggi. Courts in the remaining circuits are not bound by either line of authority. A Supreme Court holding would replace all of that with one national rule on this question.

For readers following their own or a family member's pending VPPA case, the practical near-term effect is procedural. District courts sometimes stay or hold cases that turn on a question pending before the Supreme Court, and whether that happens in any given case is a decision for that judge on that record.

For anyone running a website, the question in this case is who may sue, not whether a given analytics configuration complies with the VPPA. The statutory elements and the consent mechanism in Section 2710(b)(2)(B), including the requirement that consent be in a form distinct and separate from other legal or financial terms and that the consumer be given a clear way to withdraw it, are unchanged by the cert grant and unchanged by the argument. So is the two-year limitations period in Section 2710(c)(3) and the records-destruction duty in Section 2710(e).

The question presented concerns only the federal VPPA. A disclosure that falls outside the VPPA may still be reached by a state wiretap, consumer-protection or biometric statute with its own definitions and its own remedies, and a disclosure inside the VPPA may be covered by both.

What Happens Next

Oral argument is scheduled for Wednesday, October 14, 2026. The Court convenes at 10 a.m. and the amended calendar lists this case as the only argument that day. The Court live-streams an audio feed of argument on its website and posts the audio later the same day, and it posts the transcript of each day's arguments that afternoon. An argument is not a ruling, and questions from the bench are not a holding.

After argument the case is submitted and the Court takes as long as it takes. No rule sets a deadline. The specific event that would convert this story from an explainer into settled law is the issuance of an opinion in No. 25-459, which will be posted on the Court's opinions page and which will state the holding, the vote, and any separate opinions. Until that document exists, the governing rule in each circuit is the one described above.

Several dispositions are structurally possible and worth naming so readers can recognize them. The Court may affirm, which would leave the Sixth Circuit's judgment standing and make its reading of Section 2710(a)(1) the national rule. It may reverse or vacate, which would send the case back for further proceedings in which Salazar would still have to establish the other elements of a VPPA claim. It may resolve the case on a narrower ground, including by addressing only part of the phrase or by remanding for the lower courts to apply a clarified standard. It may also dismiss the writ as improvidently granted, which would end the Supreme Court proceeding without answering the question and leave the circuit split in place. We are deliberately not assigning likelihoods to any of these.

We will update this page when the Court issues its opinion, and we will not characterize the outcome before then.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers the federal Video Privacy Protection Act and a pending U.S. Supreme Court case, and reflects sources verified on October 10, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• Tracking open consumer class-action claim deadlines
• How California regulates personal data
• What the federal wiretap statutes cover

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Last updated: 2026-10-10. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-10.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has the Supreme Court decided Salazar v. Paramount Global?

No. As of October 10, 2026 the case is scheduled for oral argument on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, which has not yet taken place, and the Supreme Court has issued no decision in No. 25-459. The last docket activity was the receipt of the district court record on August 20, 2026.

What question is the Supreme Court actually deciding?

One question. The question presented, as framed in Salazar's petition and reproduced on the Court's docket, asks whether 'goods or services from a video tape service provider,' in the VPPA's definition of 'consumer' at 18 U.S.C. 2710(a)(1), covers all of a provider's goods or services or only its audiovisual ones. Paramount's merits brief states the question in the same words. Whether Paramount is a video tape service provider, and whether the disclosed data was personally identifiable information, were assumed below and are not part of the question presented.

What is the Video Privacy Protection Act?

A 1988 federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 2710, enacted after a journalist published Judge Robert Bork's video rental list. It makes a 'video tape service provider' liable for knowingly disclosing personally identifiable information about a consumer without consent, and it was amended once, in January 2013, to allow electronic and advance consent.

Does signing up for a free email newsletter make someone a VPPA consumer?

That is the question presented in No. 25-459. As of October 10, 2026 the answer depends on the circuit: the Second Circuit in Salazar v. NBA, 118 F.4th 533 (2024), and the Seventh Circuit in Gardner v. Me-TV, 132 F.4th 1022 (2025), say a non-video subscription can suffice, while the Sixth Circuit in this case held on April 3, 2025 that it does not, and the D.C. Circuit agreed with the Sixth Circuit in Pileggi v. Washington Newspaper Publishing Co., 146 F.4th 1219 (2025).

How much are VPPA damages?

Section 2710(c)(2)(A) lets a court award actual damages 'but not less than liquidated damages in an amount of $2,500.' That is a statutory floor rather than a cap or a guaranteed payment, and a court may add punitive damages, reasonable attorney fees and costs, and equitable relief under Section 2710(c)(2)(B) through (D).

How long do VPPA claims last?

Section 2710(c)(3) bars any action not begun within two years from the date of the act complained of or the date of discovery. The Supreme Court case does not touch that provision.

When will the Supreme Court rule?

There is no deadline. The case sits in the Court's October Term 2026 argument session that began October 5, 2026, and the Court will ordinarily issue a written opinion in No. 25-459 whenever it is ready. Argument audio is live-streamed and posted the same day, and the transcript appears the afternoon of the argument, but neither is a ruling.

Did the Supreme Court already turn down a case on this question?

Yes. The NBA asked the Court to review the contrary Second Circuit decision in National Basketball Association v. Salazar, No. 24-994. The Court denied that petition on December 8, 2025, then granted Salazar's petition from the Sixth Circuit on January 26, 2026.