Class Action- Genetic Information Privacy Act

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//May 8, 2023//

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Carolyn Bridges v. Blackstone, Inc.

Case No.: 22-2486

Officials: Hamilton, Scudder, and Pryor, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Class Action- Genetic Information Privacy Act

Carolyn Bridges and Raymond Cunningham provided their DNA to Ancestry.com, the largest genealogy company in the world. A few years later, Blackstone, Inc. acquired Ancestry in a deal reportedly worth $4.7 billion. Bridges and Cunningham filed this putative class action against Blackstone, alleging that the acquisition resulted in a violation of Illinois’s Genetic Information Privacy Act. The district court concluded that Bridges and Cunningham failed to state a claim. The Seventh Circuit curled that it cannot plausibly infer from the plaintiffs’ sparse allegations that Blackstone compelled disclosure of protected genetic information simply by acquiring Ancestry.

Affirmed.

Decided 05/01/23

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