Martin v. LCMC Health Holdings, Inc.
Summary
Martin’s putative class action alleges that LCMC embedded website tracking pixels that shared private health information with third parties for targeted advertising, asserting Louisiana Electronic Surveillance Act and unjust enrichment claims. The Fifth Circuit affirmed remand to state court because federal officer removal did not supply jurisdiction, without deciding the merits of those claims.
Litigation Status
Procedural Posture
Martin filed a putative class action in Orleans Parish Civil District Court in January 2023. LCMC removed the case to the Eastern District of Louisiana under the federal officer removal statute. The district court granted Martin’s remand motion, and LCMC appealed. The Fifth Circuit affirmed.
Reported Holding
The Fifth Circuit held that maintaining an online patient portal using tracking pixels does not constitute acting under the direction of the federal government for federal officer removal purposes. It affirmed the order remanding the case to state court.
What the Court Decided
Federal officer removal did not provide federal jurisdiction over this case; compliance with HHS Meaningful Use requirements did not establish that LCMC acted under a federal officer when maintaining the portal with tracking pixels.
What the Court Did Not Decide
The court expressly did not decide the merits of Martin’s privacy claims or whether LCMC was liable under Louisiana law.
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
- Tracking pixels
- Online patient portal
- Targeted online advertising
- tracking pixels
- online patient portal
- electronic health records
Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: Facebook.
Statutes Invoked
- 28 U.S.C. §§ 1442(a)(1), 1447(d); Louisiana Electronic Surveillance Act, La. R.S. §§ 15:1303, 15:1312. ([ca5.uscourts.gov](https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30522-CV0.pdf))
- Louisiana Electronic Surveillance Act, La. R.S. § 15:1303; federal officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1)
Claims Asserted
- Louisiana Electronic Surveillance Act
- Unjust enrichment
- Alleged interception, recording, and disclosure of wire communications under the Louisiana Electronic Surveillance Act
- Unjust enrichment arising from alleged collection, use, and disclosure of patients’ private information
What This Matter May Mean for Website Operators
For operators using similar technologies, the recurring factual questions in matters like this one are when session recording begins relative to consent and whether input masking covers every field; whether advertising pixels transmit page URLs or hashed form data before a consent choice. Our scanner tests these behaviors empirically.
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
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.
Corrections: If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate, contact us via the contact page and we will review the underlying sources promptly.
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