STANDING-FAIR AND ACCURATE CREDIT TRANSACTIONS ACT

Budai v. Country Fair, Inc., 2023 Pa. Super. LEXIS 206 (May 17, 2023) (Bowes, J.). Country Fair, Inc. (“Country Fair”) appeals from the order entered on August 20, 2020, determining that Jordan Budai, Andrea Sciola, and Ashley Gennock, individually and on behalf of all other similarly situated (“Plaintiffs”), had standing to assert a cause of action based on Country Fair’s violation of the federal Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (“FACTA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(g). We reverse the order and dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint. Congress enacted FACTA in 2003, as an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, to prevent identity theft. Between July 28 and July 30, 2017, Plaintiffs patronized Country Fair retail stores and made purchases with their debit or credit cards. Each time the Plaintiffs received a paper receipt, it displayed the first four and the last four digits of the credit or debit cards used for payment. Plaintiffs filed a class action federal suit against Country Fair, alleging that Country Fair had willfully violated FACTA. Plaintiffs did not allege that the violation resulted in their identities being stolen or their card numbers being misappropriated. They did, however, claim that storing the offending receipts to prevent identity theft by a third party who might happen across the discarded receipts was burdensome. We disagree with Plaintiffs’ contention that FACTA conferred upon them statutory standing. Notably absent from FACTA is a provision, like those in the Child Custody Act, delineating who has standing to pursue an action thereunder. Thus, while FACTA includes liability provisions that create private rights of action, there is no standing provision that “expressly prescribes the parties who may pursue a [FACTA] action in Pennsylvania courts[.]” Int. of K.N.L., supra at 136 (citation omitted). A statute setting forth a private right of action does not automatically confer standing. See Jackson v. Garland, 424 Pa. Super. 378, 622 A.2d 969, 971 (Pa.Super. 1993) (“The law of standing provides that one cannot invoke the jurisdiction of the court to enforce private rights or to maintain a civil action for the enforcement of such rights, unless he or she has, in an individual or representative capacity, some real interest in the cause of action, or a legal right, title or interest in the subject matter or controversy.”). As FACTA contains no standing provision, Plaintiffs may not invoke statutory standing to pursue their action in state court. Lacking statutory standing, Pennsylvania’s traditional standing doctrine applies. Based on the plain text of FACTA, which requires truncation of all but the last five digits of a consumer’s credit card number, we recognize Congress identified the violation alleged here. By creating a private right of action to enforce FACTA’s provisions and allowing for statutory damages for willful violations, Congress has expressed an intent to make the injury redressable. But the Clarification Act also expresses Congress’s judgment that not all procedural violations of FACTA will amount to concrete harm. The congressional findings underlying the Act are directed to the risk incurred by printing the expiration date when the card number is properly truncated. Though expiration date truncation is not at issue here, Congress’s action to limit FACTA liability to those claims implicating actual harm accords with our understanding of Article III. We now return to the instant case. As in Kamal, Plaintiffs have “alleged neither third-party access of [the] information, nor that the receipt included enough information to likely enable identity theft.” Kamal, supra at 116. All Plaintiffs have alleged is the same interest of all customers in receiving receipts in compliance with FACTA, namely, that they be properly truncated when printed. Plaintiffs’ speculative chain of events that the receipts placed them at heightened risk for identity theft solely based on their existence simply does not amount to an interest that is substantial, direct, and immediate, which our Supreme Court identified as the foundational components of standing. See Ashton, supra at 88. Nor does the alleged burden of storing or destroying the offending receipts. Stated simply, Country Fair’s conduct has not adversely affected them.