Glaser Weil Secures Early Dismissal of CIPA Privacy Class Claim for Job Search Platform

Glaser Weil secured a complete victory for TalentBridge, Inc., a talent solutions firm, obtaining early dismissal of a California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

The case, filed by pro se serial plaintiff Vivek Shah, alleged that TalentBridge’s job search website unlawfully transmitted user search queries to third parties in violation of CIPA Section 631(a).

Glaser Weil moved to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds and for failure to state a claim.  As to the jurisdictional grounds, it argued both a failure to adequately allege the amount in controversy for diversity jurisdiction and a failure to plead a concrete injury sufficient for Article III standing.

On May 28, 2026, Judge Anne Hwang granted the motion to dismiss without leave to amend, agreeing on both jurisdictional grounds and finding it unnecessary to reach the additional Rule 12(b)(6) grounds. The court held that general, anonymized job search queries on a public website, even when coupled with metadata, such as IP or session data, do not establish a cognizable privacy injury necessary to satisfy federal standing requirements.

The decision is a significant win for website operators facing the ongoing wave of CIPA litigation filed by Shah and others, confirming that standing is a meaningful threshold and that generic search queries on public websites do not satisfy Article III’s injury-in-fact requirement.

The Glaser Weil team was led by litigators Elizabeth Sperling and Sarah Miller.

To learn more, read Sperling and Miller’s practical takeaways from the case result in “No Identity, No Injury: What Businesses Can Learn from a Key CIPA Standing Victory.”