Washington Supreme Court Dismisses Meta Pixels Case–Baker v. Seattle Children’s Hospital

This is a Meta Pixels case on appeal to the Washington Supreme Court. It fails on a highly technical interpretation of the statute. The applicable Washington state statute restricts the interception of communications between two individuals. The Supreme Court says that a corporation isn’t an “individual” for purposes of this statute. Thus, the user’s interaction with the corporate-run website didn’t have sufficient human involvement: no party disputes that SCH is a corporation, and each communication involved only one of the plaintiffs and a fully automated system SCH owns and operates. Thus, under the plain language of RCW 9.73.030(1), the plaintiffs did not communicate with an “individual” when searching or clicking and receiving automated responses. The WPA provision at issue covers only private communications transmitted between “two or more individuals.” A concurring judge agrees with the statutory parsing but adds that “private communications transmitted between an individual…