Who the Video Privacy Protection Act protects: the 2025 ruling the Supreme Court heard in 2026

On Wednesday, October 14, 2026, in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court heard argument in Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459. The case turns on who counts as a “consumer” under the Video Privacy Protection Act, the 1988 federal law that stops video providers from revealing which films and other videos a person has rented, bought or asked for. The justices are reviewing a decision of April 3, 2025, in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that a person must rent, buy or subscribe to audiovisual goods or services to be protected. When we checked the Court’s docket on November 13, 2026, it listed no decision.

What the 1988 law protects

Congress acted after a reporter got hold of the video rental history of Judge Robert Bork, then a Supreme Court nominee, and published the titles of 146 films his family had rented, as the briefs on both sides recount. The law, section 2710 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, makes a “video tape service provider” liable when it knowingly discloses personally identifiable information about one of its consumers. A provider is any business that rents, sells or delivers prerecorded video cassettes “or similar audio visual materials.” The protected information includes anything that identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services.

The law lists six situations in which disclosure is allowed, among them to the consumer, with the consumer’s informed, written consent, under a warrant or court order, and in the ordinary course of business. A 2013 amendment let that consent be given over the internet and in advance, for up to two years, on a form kept separate from other legal or financial terms and with a clear way to withdraw. Before 2013, consent had to be given each time a disclosure was sought.

The case behind the 2025 ruling

Michael Salazar signed up in 2022 for a newsletter from 247Sports, a Paramount website covering college sports. According to his complaint, as the Sixth Circuit summarized it, he watched videos on the site while logged in to Facebook, and a Facebook tracking tool called the Pixel sent his Facebook ID and his viewing history to Facebook without his consent. A federal district court in Tennessee dismissed the suit in July 2023, finding he was not a “consumer.”

A divided three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit upheld the dismissal. Judge Nalbandian, writing for the majority, read “goods or services” together with the definition of a video provider and concluded that the phrase “is limited to audiovisual ones.” The newsletter on its own did not make Salazar a consumer, the court found, because his complaint did not say he reached any videos through it. Judge Bloomekatz dissented, writing of the majority’s limit that “the statute doesn’t say that.” The full court declined to rehear the case on May 13, 2025.

A split among the appeals courts

The majority said openly that it was breaking with two other circuits. The Second Circuit had ruled in 2024, on a near-identical complaint the same plaintiff brought against the National Basketball Association, that a consumer can rent, buy or subscribe to any of a provider’s goods or services, “audiovisual or not.” The Seventh Circuit followed on March 28, 2025. Later in 2025 the D.C. Circuit adopted the narrower reading, according to Salazar’s brief. The Supreme Court agreed to take the case on January 26, 2026.

The two sides

Salazar’s lawyers say the definition means what it says. “The language Congress writes into a statute is the law,” his brief begins, and it argues that a newsletter from a video provider is one of its goods or services. At the argument his counsel, Joshua Hammack, told the justices that Congress “put audiovisual limitations where it wanted them,” in the other two definitions, and that “Consent is such an easy fix.” The Electronic Privacy Information Center and 18 technical experts and legal scholars filed in his support, writing that a video provider “is not under any obligation to use these systems,” meaning trackers that pass on viewing data.

Paramount, argued by Paul Clement, says the law covers people who transact for videos. “Someone became a ‘consumer’ by renting a video from Blockbuster or subscribing to Netflix,” its brief says, warning that Salazar’s reading “would transform a 1988 video-rental statute into an unworkable internet-privacy regime.” It says hundreds of new class actions are filed under the law every year. The Motion Picture Association, whose members are Amazon Studios, Netflix Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal City Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Warner Bros. Entertainment, filed a brief with NCTA – The Internet & Television Association supporting Paramount. They say their members have been “besieged” by such claims and that 10,000 visitors to a site with free video could mean up to $25 million in liability.

What applies now

The law remains in force. The text the parties quoted in their 2026 briefs matches the section in the 2024 edition of the U.S. Code, by our comparison. Until the Supreme Court rules, the appeals courts’ decisions point in different directions on who is covered.

For people who pay a streaming service to watch films, the dispute is narrower than it may sound. By our reading of the briefs, a paid video subscription makes someone a consumer under either interpretation; Paramount’s own brief uses a Netflix subscription as its example. What is contested is whether a tie to a video provider that involves no video, such as a newsletter, is enough. Paramount says it is undisputed that simply watching free videos, with no transaction, does not make anyone a consumer.