In Briskin v. Shopify, Inc., No. 22-15815, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 9410 (9th Cir. Apr. 21, 2025), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that the Canada-based company Shopify, Inc. (“Shopify”), which provides a web-based payment processing platform to online merchants across the United States (and the world), is subject to specific personal jurisdiction in California based solely upon Shopify’s extraction, maintenance and commercial distribution of personal data from consumers it knew to be located in California. In making this ruling, the Ninth Circuit became the first Circuit in the nation to address this type of personal jurisdiction question involving a global online payment platform.
The case arose after a California resident, while present in California, used his iPhone to purchase goods online from a California-based retailer that, unknown to him at the time, utilized Shopify’s payment system. In the process of facilitating the transaction, Shopify allegedly installed “cookies” on the individual’s iPhone without his knowledge or consent, which permanently remained on his device and tracked its physical location, while also collecting data regarding his online shopping activity. Shopify allegedly used the data it extracted from its tracking software to compile a customer profile that it marketed widely, including to California merchants. The individual filed a class action lawsuit against Shopify in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging violations of various California state privacy and unfair competition laws.
Shopify moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction in California. The district court agreed, dismissing the operative complaint without leave to amend. Plaintiff appealed, and a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling that it lacked specific personal jurisdiction over Shopify. (See blog article here.) However, a majority of the active judges of the Ninth Circuit voted to rehear the appeal en banc.
The en banc Court reversed the district court’s judgment (and, thus, the panel decision), applying traditional personal jurisdiction jurisprudence to conclude that the district court has specific personal jurisdiction over Shopify because its allegedly tortious actions were purposefully directed toward California. Specifically, Court determined that Shopify “expressly aimed its conduct at California through its extraction, maintenance, and commercial distribution of the California consumers’ personal data” without their knowledge or consent. The Court also emphasized that Shopify, through its geolocation technology, allegedly knew plaintiff was located in California prior to or shortly after installing its tracking software onto his iPhone.
The en banc Court also overruled precedent, including the decision in AMA Multimedia, LLC v. Wanat, 970 F.3d 1201 (9th Cir. 2020), requiring a non-resident defendant’s globally-accessible website to have a “forum-specific focus,” otherwise known as “differential targeting,” in order to establish specific personal jurisdiction in that forum. The Court held that such a requirement runs contrary to longstanding Supreme Court authority and would have “the perverse effect of allowing a corporation to direct its activities toward all 50 states yet to escape specific personal jurisdiction in each of those states for claims arising from or relating to their relevant contacts in the forum state that injure that state’s residents.”
The Ninth Circuit’s en banc ruling establishes that universal data collection through a globally- or nationally-accessible website may make the site operator subject to specific personal jurisdiction wherever its users are located, particularly when the site operator has the capability to determine where users are located or utilizes the data it extracts for commercial purposes. The en banc Court’s decision, particularly if followed by other Circuits, is likely to dramatically increase the forums where participants in the vast and growing e-commerce market may be sued.