Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez
The Court ruled that a company being sued for sending unwanted text messages could not end the lawsuit simply by offering to pay the one customer who sued, if he refused the offer. It also ruled that the company could not shield itself from the lawsuit by claiming the Navy's own immunity from being sued.
The decision closes off a strategy some companies used to try to shut down class-action lawsuits before a class was ever certified, and it draws a firmer line around when private contractors can claim government-style protection from suit.
How it got here: A federal trial court denied the company's bid to dismiss the case as moot but later granted it summary judgment on immunity grounds; the Ninth Circuit reversed on immunity, and the company sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Navy hired an advertising company, Campbell-Ewald, to run a texting campaign aimed at 18- to 24-year-olds who had agreed to receive marketing texts. A subcontractor sent the recruiting text to more than 100,000 people, including Jose Gomez, who was almost 40 and says he never consented. Gomez sued under a federal law banning unwanted automated texts, seeking damages for himself and a nationwide class of similarly situated recipients.
The question before the Court
Can a company facing a class-action lawsuit make the whole case disappear just by offering to pay the one plaintiff who sued, before anyone else joins the class? And separately, can a business that was doing contract work for the Navy claim the government's own immunity from being sued?
Why it matters
Consumers who sue over unwanted robocalls or texts, and other would-be class-action plaintiffs, keep their power to pursue a case even after a company offers to pay them off individually. Companies that do work for the government also learn they cannot dodge lawsuits over their own legal violations just by pointing to a government contract, unless they strictly followed the government's instructions.
What changes now
The case goes back to the lower courts for further proceedings, including litigation over whether Gomez's proposed class should be certified and whether the company actually complied with the Navy's opt-in instructions. The Court explicitly left open a related question — whether actually depositing the settlement money with a court, rather than just offering it, could moot a case — for a future case where that scenario is real rather than hypothetical.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide what would happen if a company actually paid the disputed money into an account for the plaintiff and a court entered judgment on it, rather than merely offering to pay. That question was left open for a future case, and several dissenting and concurring justices sparred over how it should eventually be answered.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed that the case was not moot but rejected the majority's contract-law reasoning. He would instead look to the common-law history of 'tenders,' which required a defendant to actually produce and admit owing the full sum, not merely promise to pay, in order to end a case. Because Campbell-Ewald never paid anything, he concluded the court kept jurisdiction.
Dissent — Justice Roberts
“The problem for Gomez is that the federal courts exist to resolve real disputes, not to rule on a plaintiff's entitlement to relief already there for the taking.”The dissent's core objection that the case should have been dismissed as moot.
Chief Justice Roberts argued the case was moot because Campbell-Ewald offered Gomez the full amount he could ever recover, so there was no real dispute left for a court to resolve, regardless of whether Gomez accepted. He argued that plaintiffs, not defendants, would otherwise control whether litigation was 'necessary,' contrary to Article III's limits on judicial power.
Dissent — Justice Alito
Justice Alito joined the Chief Justice's dissent but wrote separately to stress that mootness should turn on whether it is 'absolutely clear' the defendant will actually pay the offered relief. He argued Campbell-Ewald's ability and willingness to pay were undisputed here, so the claim should have been dismissed as moot, though other less certain defendants might not get the same result.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court asked whether an offer of settlement that the plaintiff never accepted could end the case for lack of a live dispute under Article III, the constitutional requirement that federal courts only decide real, ongoing controversies.
- Applying ordinary contract-law principles, the Court reasoned that a rejected settlement offer has no continuing legal effect, just like any other rejected contract offer — it 'creates no lasting right or obligation.'
- Because the offer was off the table and the company still denied any wrongdoing, the two sides remained just as adverse as when the lawsuit began, so the plaintiff retained the same real stake in the outcome he had at the start.
- The Court distinguished a set of old railroad tax cases the company relied on, explaining that those cases involved actual payment of the disputed money into an account under a state law that treated the deposit as full satisfaction — not a mere unaccepted offer.
- Turning to the immunity question, the Court explained that private contractors do not automatically inherit the government's own absolute immunity from suit; a contractor is protected only when it did exactly what the government validly authorized it to do.
- Because the summary-judgment record showed evidence that the Navy had only authorized texts to people who had opted in, and the company may not have followed that instruction, the Court concluded no derivative immunity applied here.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Yearsley v. W. A. Ross Constr. Co. (309 U. S. 18)
The Court confirmed contractors get immunity only when they strictly followed validly authorized government instructions, not more broadly.
Distinguishes California v. San Pablo & Tulare R. Co. (149 U. S. 308)
The Court said this case involved actual payment extinguishing the debt, unlike a mere unaccepted settlement offer.