On 14 October 2026 the US Supreme Court hears Salazar v. Paramount Global. The question is narrow and the stakes are not: under the Video Privacy Protection Act, does someone who subscribes to a site’s newsletter count as a “consumer” when that site’s Meta Pixel shares which videos they watched? Four appeals courts have split two-to-two. If the Court reads “consumer” broadly, any site that offers both video and some other subscription or purchase is exposed to $2,500-per-person statutory damages for pixel disclosures. A decision is expected by the end of the Court’s term, usually late June. The fix does not wait for it: on video pages, a pixel that reports what someone watched should not fire without consent.
The case in one paragraph
The plaintiff, Salazar, subscribed to the 247Sports.com newsletter and watched videos on the site while logged into Facebook. He alleges that the Meta Pixel on those pages sent Facebook, in the district court’s words quoted by the Sixth Circuit, “the video content name, its URL, and, most notably, the [user]’s Facebook ID.” He sued Paramount, which owns 247Sports, under the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (VPPA). The Sixth Circuit dismissed the claim, holding that “the expression ‘goods or services’ is limited to audiovisual ones” — a newsletter is not a video, so a newsletter subscriber is not a “consumer”. The Supreme Court granted review on 26 January 2026.
The question the Court will answer
The VPPA lets a “consumer” sue a “video tape service provider” that knowingly discloses information identifying what videos they requested. It defines a consumer as “any renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider”. The question presented:
“whether the phrase ‘goods or services from a video tape service provider,’ as used in the VPPA’s definition of ‘consumer,’ refers to all of a video tape service provider’s goods or services or only to its audiovisual goods or services.”
Note what is not in that question. Whether 247Sports is a “video tape service provider” and whether a Facebook ID plus a video URL is “personally identifiable information” were assumed in the courts below; the petitioner’s reply brief says Paramount no longer disputes them. The Court is being asked only who counts as a consumer.
The split
| Court | Case | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Second Circuit, Oct 2024 | Salazar v. NBA — same plaintiff, NBA.com newsletter | Broad. The phrase “is not limited to audiovisual ‘goods or services'”; the newsletter counts. |
| Seventh Circuit, Mar 2025 | Gardner v. Me-TV | Broad. Any purchase or subscription from a provider qualifies, “even if the thing purchased is clothing or the thing subscribed to is a newsletter.” |
| Sixth Circuit, Apr 2025 | Salazar v. Paramount (this case) | Narrow. Only audiovisual goods or services. A dissent: “But the statute doesn’t say that.” |
| D.C. Circuit, Aug 2025 | Pileggi v. Washington Newspaper Publishing | Narrow. A plaintiff must have “purchased, rented, or subscribed to a video cassette tape or similar audio-visual good or service.” |
What each side argues
Salazar argues the words mean what they say: “any” subscriber of “goods or services”, with no “video” qualifier — a qualifier Congress did use elsewhere in the same section, where personally identifiable information refers to “video materials or services”. In his reply brief, that the pixel is everywhere is beside the point: the statute applies “no matter how many providers might be violating it”.
Paramount argues the definitions interlock around video, and that the broad reading would turn the statute into something Congress never wrote. Its merits brief warns that “virtually any company with a website” could face “potentially ruinous class-action liability”, points to “hundreds of new class actions” filed every year, and says Salazar’s reading “silently transformed a video-privacy statute into an all-purpose privacy law”.
Meta filed an amicus brief supporting Paramount, calling the case “one salvo in an ongoing broadside attack on modern analytics tools”. The United States has not filed a brief.
Why site operators should care before June
The VPPA’s remedy is what makes these cases expensive: courts may award “actual damages but not less than liquidated damages in an amount of $2,500” per person, plus punitive damages and attorneys’ fees. Multiply by every logged-in visitor who watched a video, and a single pixel becomes a class action.
A broad ruling would make the newsletter sign-up, the account, or the merchandise order the thing that turns a visitor into a “consumer” — on any site that also offers video. A narrow ruling would limit claims to people who subscribed to or bought video itself. Either way, the disclosure being litigated is the same one: a tag on a video page that sends a platform an identifier together with what was watched.
What you can do now
- Find the pixels on video pages. Open a video page in a clean profile, filter the Network panel for
facebook.com/trand other ad hosts, and check whether the request carries the page URL or video title alongside an identifier. Our network-tab guide shows the method; blocking embeds until consent covers the video players themselves. - Don’t let video titles reach ad platforms by default. Many pixels send the full URL; if your video URLs contain titles, so does the pixel request.
- Gate the pixel on consent. The VPPA’s own exception requires “informed, written consent (including through an electronic means using the Internet)” that is “in a form distinct and separate” from other terms, lasts no more than two years, and comes with a clear way to withdraw (§ 2710(b)(2)(B)). A generic cookie banner may not meet that bar; that is a question for counsel. What is not in question is that a pixel which fires before any choice has no consent at all — see the pre-consent tracking checklist.
- Know which of your forms make someone a “subscriber”. Newsletter sign-ups, free accounts and purchases are exactly what the Court is deciding about.
For the related California wiretap theory, see how a California court let pixel cases proceed as class actions. We will follow up when the Court rules. Nothing here is legal advice.
Whether a pixel on your video pages fires before consent, and what it sends, is something you can check today. Scan your site and see which requests leave before a choice is made with CookieInspector.