D'Antonio v. Cable News Network, Inc.

Published by Crandall Consulting · Informational litigation intelligence · Last substantive update: October 1, 2026

Docket / citation: 1:2024cv03132 · Filed: 2024-01-25

Summary

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied CNN’s motion to dismiss a putative class action alleging violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act based on third‑party trackers on CNN.com. The court found the plaintiff’s allegations sufficient to survive Rule 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) challenges and declined to resolve factbound questions about statutory exceptions at the dismissal stage.

Litigation Status

Status, direction, and weight describe how tracked public sources characterize this matter as of our last review — they are informational classifications, not legal assessments.

Procedural Posture

Plaintiff originally filed a complaint on January 25, 2024 (filed in California state court), defendant removed and parties transferred to SDNY, a First Amended Complaint was filed June 14, 2024, and after substitution of the named plaintiff the Second Amended Complaint was filed October 16, 2025. Defendant CNN moved to dismiss on December 19, 2025; the Court denied the motion on April 9, 2026.

Reported Holding

The district court denied defendant CNN’s motion to dismiss the Second Amended Complaint alleging violations of California Penal Code § 638.51, concluding that the plaintiff plausibly alleged that third‑party trackers on CNN.com collected IP addresses and device metadata that could be linked to non‑anonymous profiles and that factual issues (including as to standing and exceptions for electronic communication service providers) made dismissal at the Rule 12 stage inappropriate.

What the Court Decided

The Court denied CNN’s Rule 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the Second Amended Complaint alleging CIPA violations, finding that the pleadings and accompanying allegations were sufficient to permit the claim to proceed and that questions about statutory exceptions and whether the trackers operate to ‘operate, maintain, and test’ an electronic communication service presented factual issues not suitable for resolution on a motion to dismiss.

What the Court Did Not Decide

The Court did not resolve the merits of whether the trackers in fact constitute a pen register under CIPA, whether data brokers actually de‑anonymized users, or whether any CIPA exception (including the electronic communication service provider exception) applies; those factual and merits issues remain for later proceedings.

Significance

Generally viewed as plaintiff-favorable. Characterizations of significance describe how the matter has generally been discussed in tracked public sources; individual holdings are often narrow, procedural, or fact-specific, and this page does not state or imply broader holdings than the sources support.

What This Page Does and Does Not Say

This page reports what our tracked public sources say about this matter — including, where identified, the procedural posture (for example, a ruling on a motion to dismiss is not a final merits decision). It does not report legal conclusions beyond those sources, does not predict outcomes, and does not constitute legal advice.

Technologies at Issue

• third‑party trackers
• cookies with unique identifiers
• IP address collection
• device identifier/device metadata collection
• data broker matching
• real‑time ad bidding/advertising targeting

Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: PubMatic, Microsoft, OpenX.

Statutes Invoked

• Cal. Penal Code §§ 638.50(b), 638.51(a) (California Invasion of Privacy Act)

Claims Asserted

Claims identified in tracked public sources; pleadings may include additional or amended claims.

• California Invasion of Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 638.51) — pen register prohibition
• Pen register definition/claim under Cal. Penal Code § 638.50(b)
• Class action allegations

What This Matter May Mean for Website Operators

For operators using similar technologies, the recurring factual questions in matters like this one are whether advertising pixels transmit page URLs or hashed form data before a consent choice. Our scanner tests these behaviors empirically.

Because this matter is pending, anything reported here is procedural — allegations and interim rulings, not final determinations.

Detection of a similar technology on a website is an informational risk indicator, not a legal conclusion, and nothing in this section is legal advice.

Related Intelligence

Sources

• D'Antonio v. Cable News Network, Inc. (CNN), Document 86 (S.D.N.Y. Decision) — Justia (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York) · Tier A (Primary authority) · 2026-04-09

About This Page

Publisher: Inspection-Ready Institute, Inc. (DBA Crandall Consulting), an independent website compliance and risk consultancy. We are not a law firm and nothing on this page is legal advice.

How this content is produced: Facts are extracted from publicly available sources — court and government materials, recognized legal press, professional analysis, and industry reports — by our litigation intelligence engine, stored with full source provenance, and rendered from the database. Risk guidelines are computed by a deterministic formula, never by an AI model directly. See the full methodology.

Limitations: Counts labeled "Tracked" reflect matters identified in our source set and are not official court statistics. We report what courts decided and did not decide; we do not predict outcomes.

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