ARTICLE III STANDING | Key Points

1. Florida’s Eleventh Circuit recently considered whether a person who received one unwanted text message in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act suffered a concrete injury sufficient to support Article III standing in federal court. Drazen v. GoDaddy.com, LLC, 2023 WL 4699939 (11th July 24, 2023). GoDaddy sent Drazen one unwanted automated text message which Drazen claimed was part of an unlawful telemarketing campaign. Drazen claimed one message was sufficient to satisfy the concrete injury element of Article III standing. The district court disagreed so Drazen appealed.

2. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit considered whether one text message, as opposed to a combination of phone call(s) and/or text messages, satisfied the concrete injury requirement of Article III. The Court concluded that the single unwanted text message was “an intrusion into the peace and quiet in a realm that is private and personal” similar to the traditional tort of intrusion upon seclusion. The Court explained that the crucial element for evaluating the respective harms was whether they shared a close relationship “in kind, not degree.” The Court concluded “an unwanted text message is…offensive to some degree to a reasonable person” and that was sufficient to satisfy the concrete injury element of Article III standing.

3. The Court rejected GoDaddy’s argument that receipt of a single unwanted text was insufficient to satisfy the “highly offensive to a reasonable person” requirement for the tort of invasion upon seclusion. The Court rejected this argument and reiterated: The harm need not be an exact duplicate or carbon copy of the harm required by the tort, only similar in kind.