PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 22-1619

MARCO A. FERNANDEZ,

Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

RENTGROW, INC.,

Defendant – Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore. James K. Bredar, Senior District Judge. (1:19-cv-01190-JKB)

Argued: October 26, 2023 Decided: September 11, 2024

Before NIEMEYER, QUATTLEBAUM, and RUSHING, Circuit Judges.

Vacated and remanded by published opinion. Judge Rushing wrote the opinion, in which Judge Niemeyer and Judge Quattlebaum joined. Judge Niemeyer wrote a concurring opinion.

ARGUED: Maura K. Monaghan, DEBEVOISE & PLIMPTON LLP, New York, New York, for Appellant. Matthew W.H. Wessler, GUPTA WESSLER PLLC, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Kristin D. Kiehn, Emilia N. Brunello, DEBEVOISE & PLIMPTON LLP, New York, New York; Bonnie Keane DelGobbo, Chicago, Illinois, Joel Griswold, BAKER & HOSTETLER, LLP, Orlando, Florida, for Appellant. Neil K. Sawhney, GUPTA WESSLER PLLC, San Francisco, California; E. Michelle Drake, John G. Albanese, Ariana Kiener, BERGER MONTAGUE PC, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Martin USCA4 Appeal: 22-1619 Doc: 49 Filed: 09/11/2024 Pg: 2 of 22

E. Wolf, GORDON, WOLF & CARNEY, CHTD., Towson, Maryland, for Appellee.

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RUSHING, Circuit Judge:

When Marco Fernandez applied to rent an apartment, defendant RentGrow, Inc.,

sent the property owner a tenant screening report about him. The report inaccurately stated

that Fernandez had “1 Possible Match in OFAC Name Search.” Luckily for Fernandez,

the property manager who reviewed his report did not know what “OFAC” was or read the

section of his report about the possible match, and it did not factor into any variable she

considered when deciding whether to rent an apartment to him.

Nevertheless, Fernandez sued RentGrow for reporting this misleading information

about him and sought to represent a class of similarly situated plaintiffs. The district court

certified a class of individuals who were the subject of a consumer report with a misleading

“possible OFAC match” furnished by RentGrow to a third party. In certifying the class,

the district court rejected RentGrow’s objection that Fernandez and the class members had

failed to demonstrate a concrete injury sufficient to establish Article III standing to sue.

According to the district court, it did not matter that the recipient of a misleading report did

not read or comprehend it; dissemination of the report sufficed to show a concrete injury

in fact.

We disagree. Reputational harm can be a concrete injury, but only if the misleading

information was brought to the attention of a third party who understood its defamatory

significance. The evidence here does not support an inference that any third party read and

understood, or otherwise considered, the inaccurate OFAC information in Fernandez’s

tenant screening report. He therefore has failed to demonstrate a concrete injury sufficient

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for Article III standing. That conclusion requires rethinking class certification, so we

vacate the district court’s certification order and rema

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