[PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 19-14434 ____________________ RICHARD HUNSTEIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus PREFERRED COLLECTION AND MANAGEMENT SERVICES, INC.,

Defendant-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 8:19-cv-00983-TPB-TGW ____________________ USCA11 Case: 19-14434 Date Filed: 10/28/2021 Page: 2 of 65

2 Opinion of the Court 19-14434

Before JORDAN, NEWSOM, and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges. NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: Upon consideration of the petition for rehearing, the amicus curiae briefs submitted in support of that petition, and the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190 (2021), which bears on one of the issues presented in the case, the Court sua sponte VACATES its prior opinion, published at 994 F.3d 1341 (11th Cir. 2021), and substitutes the following in its place.

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This appeal presents an interesting question of first impres- sion under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act—and, like so many other cases arising under federal statutes these days, requires us first to consider whether our plaintiff has Article III standing. Here’s the short story, as described in the complaint, whose allegations we must accept as true for present purposes: A debt collector electronically transmitted “sensitive medical infor- mation” concerning a consumer’s debt—including not only his name and outstanding balance, but also the fact that his debt re- sulted from his minor son’s medical treatment, as well as his son’s name—to a third-party vendor. The vendor then used the data to create, print, and mail a “dunning” letter to the consumer. The consumer filed suit alleging that, in sending his personal USCA11 Case: 19-14434 Date Filed: 10/28/2021 Page: 3 of 65

19-14434 Opinion of the Court 3 information to the vendor—and in particular, the complaint says, to the vendor’s “employees”—the debt collector had violated 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(b), which, with certain exceptions, prohibits debt collectors from communicating consumers’ personal information to third parties “in connection with the collection of any debt.” The district court rejected the consumer’s reading of § 1692c(b) and dismissed his suit. On appeal, we must consider, as a threshold matter, whether the consumer has adequately alleged that the debt collector’s violation of § 1692c(b) caused him to suffer a concrete injury in fact under Article III, and, on the merits, whether the debt collector’s communication with its dunning vendor was “in con- nection with the collection of any debt.” We hold (1) that the violation of § 1692c(b) alleged in this case gives rise to a concrete injury in fact under Article III, and (2) that the debt collector’s transmittal of the consumer’s personal information to its dunning vendor constituted a communication “in connection with the collection of any debt” within the meaning of § 1692c(b). Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings.

I

Congress enacted the FDCPA “to eliminate abusive debt collection practices by debt collectors” and “to protect consumers against debt collection abuses.” 15 U.S.C. § 1692(e). To that end, § 1692c(b) of the FDCPA, titled “Communication with third par- ties,” provides that— USCA11 Case: 19-14434 Date Filed: 10/28/2021 Page: 4 of 65

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