Sephora Customers Lodge Class Action Alleging Ongoing Data Sharing, Privacy Violations

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Sephora TRE Class Action Lawsuit Overview

• Why: The plaintiffs accuse the two companies of violating their privacy by sharing their retail transaction data.
• Who: Two women are suing Sephora and The Retail Equation, Inc.
• Where: The class action lawsuit was filed in California federal court.

Two Sephora customers are suing the cosmetics company and The Retail Equation, Inc. (TRE), a data analytics company, for the ongoing exchange and judgment of customers’ information.

Sephora filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which they are accused of violating, was not in effect at the time the plaintiffs’ complaints began. 

The lead plaintiffs, Shadi Hayden and Sowbhagia Naidu, filed the class action lawsuit after they tried to make an in-store return or exchange in 2019. Their transactions were denied after Sephora shared the women’s information with TRE which then determined Hayden and Naidu posed high retail risks. 

Hayden and Naidu responded to Sephora’s motion to argue that they are litigating the ongoing allegedly illegal sharing of information, not merely the single return exchange in 2019. Therefore, the CCPA would still be enforceable in this case, they say. 

Sephora Class Action Not Only Lawsuit TRE Faces Claiming ‘Inaccurate’ Data

The Retail Equation receives customers’ transaction data from various retail companies. TRE then takes that information and creates a “risk score” for each customer which is supposed to evaluate their risk for retail fraud. 

However, consumers claim that these scores are inaccurate, inaccessible and unappealable. 

TRE faces another class action lawsuit in Pennsylvania over this practice which also implicates Best Buy and Dick’s Sporting Goods. 

In recent years, Sephora faced a lawsuit alleging thousands of its employees were not properly compensated for all of the time worked. 

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The plaintiff is represented by Tina Wolfson, Theodore Maya, Bradley K. King, Christopher Stiner, and Henry J. Kelston of Adhoot & Wolfson, PC and Cornelius P. Dukelow of Abington Cole + Ellery.

The Sephora TRE Data Sharing Class Action Lawsuit is Hayden, et al. v. The Retail Equation, et al., Case No. 8:20-cv-01203 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Eastern Division. 

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