Ancestry Loses Bid to Take Genetic-Privacy Claims to Arbitrator

Ancestry.com DNA LLC must face the genetic-privacy claims of minors whose guardians submitted their DNA for analysis in court rather than before an arbitrator, a federal appeals court ruled.

Plaintiff Alex Coatney, along with minors identified only as N.S., H.S. and B.H., weren’t bound by arbitration agreements to which their guardians agreed because they weren’t “closely related parties” foreseeably bound by Ancestry’s terms and conditions, and weren’t direct beneficiaries of those terms and conditions, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said Thursday, affirming a lower court’s ruling.

“Though a special relationship exists between plaintiffs and their guardians, ...