The Supreme Court has given the green light for a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit to proceed against Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
Facebook’s parent Meta is being sued over the massive privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
Earlier this month, the justices heard arguments in Meta’s bid to shut down the lawsuit.
On Friday, the Supreme Court justices decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court previously dismissed Meta’s appeal.
The decision from the Supreme Court leaves in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company’s shares in 2018.
The investors say the share price plunged after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court’s action.
In a statement, Stone said:
“The plaintiff’s claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court.”
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica was accused of scraping data from Facebook users.
The company had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million of the social media platform’s users.
That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies.
The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.
Investors say the company misled them about its dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency.
READ MORE – Meta Employees Admit Facebook Censors Pro-Trump, Conservative, Anti-Democrat Posts
