Meta Asks High Court to Review Cambridge Analytica Row’s Revival

An investor suit over privacy scandals involving political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and other apps shouldn’t have been reinstated, Meta Platforms Inc. said Monday in asking the US Supreme Court to take the case.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit deepened two circuit splits on issues of companies’ risk disclosures and the cause of stock-price declines, and its ruling should be reversed, Meta said in its petition for review.

The Ninth Circuit panel concluded over a partial dissent that news articles in March 2018 about the company, then called Facebook Inc., “somehow caused two substantial stock drops four months apart,” Meta said. “Until this ruling, no court in any jurisdiction had recognized two loss events resulting from the same disclosure.”

The second stock drop “equated to roughly $100 billion, which at the time was the largest single-day stock drop in U.S. history,” it said in the petition.

Meta notified the Ninth Circuit Monday that it filed its request for review the same day. The petition wasn’t available Monday through the Supreme Court’s website.

Investors sued Facebook in 2018 over statements allegedly assuring users that third parties wouldn’t get access to their data without their consent—before the Cambridge Analytica scandal and another data-harvesting scandal erupted and allegedly erased $200 billion in market capitalization. The district court dismissed the suit, the Ninth Circuit revived it in October 2023, and the en banc court denied rehearing in December.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represents Meta.

The case is Amalgamated Bank v. Facebook, Inc., 9th Cir., No. 22-15077, notice of appeal 3/4/24.