Article III standing
Healy v. Milliman Inc.
Date: Jan. 9, 2026
Issue: Whether named and unnamed members of a certified class seeking money damages must present evidence of standing at summary judgment.
Case Summary: In a unanimous decision, a Ninth Circuit panel held that both named and unnamed class members must present evidence of standing at summary judgment.
In October 2020, James Healy filed a class action against Milliman Inc., alleging that Milliman violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by providing inaccurate consumer reports. Milliman, a Seattle-based risk management firm, sells “Intelliscript” reports to insurers that analyze applicants’ medical and prescription histories. The reports rely on personal identifiers, mainly Social Security numbers, and also use “fuzzy matching,” which links records based on similar names, dates of birth, ZIP codes, or other partial matches rather than exact identifiers.
Milliman’s reports apply insurers’ underwriting criteria and assign red, yellow, or green risk flags that can determine coverage eligibility. When Healy applied for life insurance in April 2020, Milliman supplied Americo with a report that wrongly included another person’s medical records and Social Security number, falsely labeled Healy as high risk, and led to the denial of his application. Despite repeated requests, Milliman failed to promptly investigate or correct the errors.
Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington granted Milliman’s motion for partial summary judgment, holding that Healy failed to establish class-wide standing for his FCRA inaccuracy claims. Although the court initially certified an “inaccuracy class” based on reports containing mismatched Social Security numbers and adverse risk flags, it later ruled that those mismatches did not, by themselves, show concrete injury across the class.
Citing TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the court required direct evidence of class-wide injury at summary judgment, determining that Healy did not meet that burden because mismatched identifiers do not necessarily demonstrate misattributed health records. Healy moved for reconsideration, but the court denied it.
On appeal, the panel reversed and remanded, holding that TransUnion requires unnamed members of a certified class seeking money damages to present evidence of Article III standing at summary judgment, not only when individual damages are awarded. Before certification, only named plaintiffs must show standing if at least one named plaintiff has standing, and at the end of a damages case, every class member must have standing to recover, the panel said. Because this case fell after certification and before trial, the panel agreed that TransUnion requires unnamed class members to produce standing evidence at summary judgment rather than rely on allegations alone.
However, the panel concluded the district court misapplied the summary judgment standard. At that stage, plaintiffs need only raise a genuine dispute of material fact on standing and may rely on circumstantial evidence, including evidence tending to show inaccurate reporting under the FCRA. Because the district court required conclusive proof of standing rather than asking whether a reasonable jury could find standing based on the evidence, the panel reversed the dismissal of the inaccuracy class and remanded for further proceedings.
Bottom Line: The panel held that unnamed class members in damages actions must present evidence of Article III standing at summary judgment.
Document: Opinion
