On September 30, 2026, a district court in the Northern District of California denied class certification in Hinton v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., No. 23-cv-04529-JD. The case rested on typical website wiretapping allegations: a website operator embedding third-party tracking code that allegedly intercepted visitors’ communications. The complaint sought statutory damages of at minimum $5,000 per violation, driving significant class exposure.

Plaintiffs brought a single claim under § 631 of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), on an aiding-and-abetting theory. They alleged that Planned Parenthood put tracking code from third-party adtech vendors on its website. In their telling, that code let those companies intercept visitors’ health-related information and identify the visitors.

Plaintiffs sought a damages class under Rule 23(b)(3) and an injunctive class under Rule 23(b)(2). The court held that Plaintiffs “manifestly failed” to meet their burden. 

The damages class. Plaintiffs’ theory was that vendors linked class members’ browsing to their identities, so Plaintiffs had to show they could prove that with common evidence. But their main evidence, the court found, was built on a mere “inference based on generalities and speculation”: that tracking tools exist to personalize content, so the vendors must have matched activity to individuals. The court likened this to the generalized expert testimony the Supreme Court found inadequate in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes.

The more concrete evidence Plaintiffs had did not help either. The third-party vendor activity reports they offered did not show that the vendor tracked and linked Plaintiffs’ activity on the site. That left Plaintiffs’ own testimony that they used the site to research their health concerns. The court called such testimony “exactly the opposite of classwide, common proof,” because it would require deciding claims “one claim at a time.” 

Injunctive class. This class was largely an afterthought for Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs devoted less than a page to it and offered no proof of a practice applying to the class as a whole. The primary relief they sought was also monetary, which does not fit Rule 23(b)(2).

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While many of these cases settle long before a certification ruling, Defendants facing these claims should still ask early whether plaintiffs can prove their theory with evidence common to the class. The answer is an important part of defense strategy, assessing settlement value, and product and website design.