$35 billion facial-recognition lawsuit against Facebook moving forward

Enlarge / The Facebook app displayed on the screen of an iPhone. (credit: Fabian Sommer | picture alliance | Getty Images)

Facebook's most recent attempt to extricate itself from a potentially landmark lawsuit has come to a dead end, as a federal court declined to hear another appeal to stop the $35 billion class action.

In San Francisco last week, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit denied Facebook's petition for an en banc hearing in the case. Usually, appeals cases are heard by a panel of three judges out of all the judges who work in a given circuit. An en banc hearing is a kind of appeal in which a much larger group of judges hears a case. In the 9th Circuit, 11 of the 29 judges sit on en banc cases.

Facebook had requested an en banc hearing to appeal the 9th's Circuit's August ruling, in which the court determined that the plaintiffs had standing to sue even though Facebook's alleged actions did not cause them any quantifiable financial harm. The class-action suit can now move forward.

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