Maracich v. Spears
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal privacy law's litigation exception does not cover attorneys' use of DMV records to solicit new clients, even when the solicitation is tied to an existing lawsuit.
The case sends a set of South Carolina lawyers' mass-mailing campaign back to the lower courts to determine whether their letters were predominantly meant to drum up business rather than investigate or advance the litigation itself.
How it got here: A federal trial court ruled for the lawyers, the Fourth Circuit affirmed on different grounds, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the DMV-records dispute.
The Case in Depth
What happened
South Carolina lawyers suing car dealerships for allegedly unlawful fees obtained the names and addresses of thousands of car buyers from the state DMV and mailed over 34,000 letters inviting recipients to join the lawsuit as plaintiffs. The car buyers who received these letters sued the lawyers, claiming the DMV records had been obtained and used unlawfully to solicit them without their consent.
The question before the Court
Could lawyers use car buyers' personal DMV records, obtained under a litigation exception, to send mass solicitation letters recruiting them as plaintiffs?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that soliciting clients is not a use "in connection with" litigation, so the Driver's Privacy Protection Act's litigation exception does not cover it, even when the solicitation is tied to a specific pending lawsuit. The Court held that attorney solicitation is a distinct commercial activity, separate from an attorney's duties to the court or client, and that reading the exception to cover solicitation would let lawyers bypass a separate provision requiring people's express consent before their DMV information is used for bulk marketing or solicitation.
Because the lower appeals court had found the letters were solicitations but excused them as intertwined with the litigation, the Supreme Court sent the case back so the lower courts can determine, under the correct legal standard, whether the letters' predominant purpose was solicitation rather than legitimate investigation.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Lawyers nationwide who use state DMV records to identify and contact potential plaintiffs now face a sharper line between permissible investigation and prohibited solicitation, exposing them to civil liability if solicitation predominates. Drivers gain stronger protection against having their DMV information used for unsolicited legal-services pitches without their consent.
What changes now
The case returns to the lower courts to apply the Court's new predominant-purpose test to the actual letters the lawyers sent, determining whether their main goal was investigating the case or drumming up new clients. The lower courts may also address whether a separate government-function exception independently justified the lawyers' conduct, an issue the Supreme Court left open. This is a final merits ruling on the legal test, but factual application awaits further proceedings.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the lawyers' letters actually had solicitation as their predominant purpose—that question goes back to the lower courts. It also left open whether a separate exception for government-related functions might independently protect the lawyers' conduct, and it did not address the DPPA's criminal-liability provision.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
“Reality thus belies the Court’s pretense that a bright line separates solicitation from other aspects of a lawyer’s role as officer of the court.”Ginsburg's objection that the majority's solicitation/investigation distinction is unworkable in practice.
Justice Ginsburg argued the majority read a solicitation ban into the litigation exception that Congress never wrote, when the statute's plain 'in connection with' language should simply require a concrete, identified civil dispute that is ongoing or imminent. She warned the predominant-purpose test is unworkable because investigation and solicitation are often inseparable, exposes lawyers to massive and even criminal liability without fair warning, and that the rule of lenity should have resolved any ambiguity in the lawyers' favor. She would have affirmed the Fourth Circuit.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court read the federal privacy law's litigation exception, which allows use of DMV records 'in connection with' a legal proceeding, against the backdrop of the law's overall structure rather than in isolation, since an open-ended phrase like 'in connection with' needs a limiting principle to avoid covering almost anything remotely related to a lawsuit.
- The Court treated an attorney's business-getting activity of soliciting new clients as categorically different from an attorney's work as an officer of the court, noting that bar rules and case law long treat solicitation as separate professional conduct subject to its own regulation.
- Applying a canon that words are understood by the company they keep, the Court found that the exception's listed examples—serving legal papers, investigating before suing, enforcing judgments—all involve court-related duties, not commercial client-getting, so solicitation did not fit among them.
- The Court reasoned that reading a separate provision, which permits mass solicitation only with the recipient's express consent, alongside the litigation exception counseled against letting the litigation exception swallow up the consent requirement by allowing solicitation without consent.
- The Court concluded that when obtaining or using DMV records has solicitation as its predominant purpose, the litigation exception does not apply, even if the solicitation targets people connected to a pending lawsuit.