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SFGATE (February 24, 2024) — Trial is scheduled for May in a case affecting millions of California drivers. The company says it did nothing wrong.

If you drive a car in California, you may be in for a payday thanks to a lawsuit alleging privacy violations by a Texas company.The 2021 lawsuit, given class-action status in September, alleges that Digital Recognition Network is breaking a California law meant to regulate the use of automatic license plate readers. DRN, a Fort Worth-based company, uses plate-scanning cameras to create location data for people’s vehicles, then sells that data to marketers, car repossessors and insurers.

What’s particularly notable about the case is the size of the class. The court has established that if you’re a California resident whose license plate data was collected by DRN at least 15 times since June 2017, you’re a class member. The plaintiff’s legal team estimates that the tally includes about 23 million people, alleging that DRN cameras were mounted to cars on public roads. The case website lets Californians check whether their plates were scanned.

“DRN is capturing a pretty detailed picture of people’s lives,” Wade-Scott said. “That could be capturing you at home, at work, at your school, your house of worship, at your doctor. And we’ll argue to a jury that that does not respect Californians’ civil liberties, or their privacy, and that they’re harmed by DRN’s violations of the statute.”

DRN denies the allegation that it broke the California law. The case’s website, a court-ordered neutral ground for potential class members to read about the litigation, reads, “DRN maintains that neither Plaintiff nor any similarly situated person has suffered any harm.” Read more here.