In a published decision that openly splits with another district, the First District held that a plaintiff suing under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.) in California state court need not prove a concrete injury to have standing. The violation of a statutory right is itself enough. The ruling reverses an order decertifying a class and expressly declines to follow the Fifth District’s contrary holding in Limon v. Circle K Stores Inc. (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 671.
Terry Askins applied online for a job with CRST Expedited, Inc., a trucking company. During the application process, CRST gave him a document disclosing that it would run a background check, and during his employment it provided additional forms relating in part to background checks. CRST conducted background checks on Askins both before and during his employment.
Askins filed a class action on behalf of CRST’s current, former, and prospective job applicants nationwide for whom background checks were performed during a defined period. The complaint alleged that CRST procured consumer reports without using legally compliant disclosure and authorization forms, in violation of the FCRA (plus other claims not at issue on appeal). He sought to certify a “consumer report class” and a “driver class,” along with two subclasses tied to missing authorizations and missing “Summary of Rights” notices.
The trial court granted class certification. CRST then moved to decertify, relying on the newly decided Limon, in which the Fifth District held that an FCRA plaintiff must demonstrate a cognizable injury from the noncompliant disclosure to have standing. After a hearing, the trial court agreed: it treated Limon as binding authority and found that Askins’s confusion about the forms and his lack of awareness that CRST would obtain consumer reports were merely “informational” and therefore insufficient to confer standing. Because both certified classes rested on the FCRA causes of action, the court decertified the entire class.
The First Appellate District, Division Three of the Court of Appeal reversed in the published case Askins v. CRST Expedited, Inc., -No. A172921 (June 2026) and held that the FCRA does not require a concrete injury for standing in California and reversed the decertification order. It pointedly declined to follow Limon. The court did not decide whether Askins is an appropriate class representative or whether the class might be decertified on other grounds, leaving those questions for the trial court on remand. Askins recovers his costs on appeal.
Federal courts require actual, redressable harm (TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (2021) 594 U.S. 413), but Article III’s case-or-controversy limits do not bind state courts—even when they interpret federal statutes (ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish (1989) 490 U.S. 605). For statutory claims, California standing turns on statutory interpretation (Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 1104), and a legislature may authorize statutory damages without concrete harm (Kim v. Reins International California, Inc. (2020) 9 Cal.5th 73). Whether a party may bring a federal claim in state court is itself a question of state law.
The plain text of the FCRA. Section 1681n(a)(1)(A) lets a consumer recover either “actual damages sustained … as a result of the failure” or statutory damages of $100 to $1,000. The second clause deliberately omits the limiting words “actual,” “sustained by the consumer,” and “as a result of the failure.” Reading “damages” by its ordinary 1996 meaning—Black’s Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990) included nominal damages for vindicating a right with no provable loss—the court concluded the statutory-damages remedy reaches technical violations. The disjunctive “or” gives the two clauses separate meanings (United States v. Woods (2013) 571 U.S. 31), and construing them identically would erase the distinction Congress drew.
A statutory violation alone confers standing. The court aligned the FCRA with a line of recent California decisions holding that a bare statutory violation supplies standing under analogous consumer-protection statutes: Kashanian (Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act); Chai v. Velocity Investments, LLC (2025) 108 Cal.App.5th 1030 (Fair Debt Buying Practices Act); Parsonage v. Wal-Mart Associates, Inc. (2026) 118 Cal.App.5th 399 and Yeh v. Barrington Pacific, LLC (2026) 117 Cal.App.5th 1303 (both under ICRAA). A plaintiff need only show “a sufficient interest in the subject matter of the dispute” (Kim, supra).
The court rejected Limon’s reasoning on three points: (1) Limon contrasted “damages” with the “civil penalty” available to the FTC under § 1681s, but ignored that an FTC enforcement action involves no personal loss to the agency; (2) Limon relied on a 2019 dictionary definition of “damages” that was narrower than the 1990 definition in effect when Congress amended the FCRA in 1996; and (3) the authorities Limon cited—Raines v. Coastal Pacific Food Distributors, Inc. (2018) 23 Cal.App.5th 667 and Thomas v. FTS USA, LLC (E.D. Va. 2016) 193 F.Supp.3d 623—did not support its conclusion (Raines was not an FCRA case, and Thomas turned on Article III injury-in-fact). The court also declined to follow Muha v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc. (2024) 106 Cal.App.5th 199, which had adopted Limon.
Askins’s interest was sufficient. The FCRA’s disclosure provisions protect accurate reporting and consumer privacy. The parties did not dispute (for this appeal) that CRST’s disclosure was noncompliant; Askins’s forms were lengthy, confusing, and laden with extraneous content, leaving him unaware that a background check would occur and unable to object, decline, or verify the results. Even assuming the resulting report was accurate, that deprivation of FCRA-mandated procedural protections was a concrete interference with his statutory privacy rights—an interest “over and above” that of the public at large (Department of Fair Employment & Housing v. M&N Financing Corp. (2021) 69 Cal.App.5th 434)—and sufficed to confer standing.