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Hillsdale decision extends VPPA to free, educational content

11/17/25

By: Michael Brown and Emily Mayfield

A recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan has expanded the interpretation of who may qualify as a “video tape service provider” under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 U.S.C. § 2710. The VPPA prohibits such providers from knowingly disclosing personally identifiable information (PII) about their consumers to third parties without consent.

In Goodman v. Hillsdale College, the court addressed allegations brought by plaintiffs who accessed educational videos hosted on Hillsdale’s website, online.hillsdale.edu. To view most of the educational videos, users were required to create free accounts and provide personal information, including their full names and email addresses. Plaintiffs alleged that the website utilized Meta Pixel, a tracking tool designed to collect and transmit user data, to share users’ video viewing activity and Facebook IDs with Meta, without their consent.

Hillsdale College moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that: (1) the defendant is not a video tape service provider under the VPPA; (2) the plaintiffs do not qualify as “consumers”; (3) the disclosed data does not constitute PII; (4) the defendant is not responsible for the alleged disclosures; and (5) any disclosures were an incident to the ordinary course of business.

Chief Judge Jarbou denied the motion to dismiss, finding that the college could be considered a video tape service provider as the videos have an educational purpose independent of their marketing function, and the transmission of URLs and Facebook IDs may constitute the disclosure of PII under the statute. The court highlighted that nonprofit status and free access to content do not exempt an institution from VPPA obligations. The proposed class action case is set to proceed with discovery.

This ruling adds to the growing body of caselaw discussing the reach of the VPPA, which once was predominately confined to commercial media. It also signals heightened scrutiny of how organizations, including higher education institutions, manage tracking technologies and user data.

For more information, please contact Michael Brown at michael.brown@fmglaw.com or your local FMG attorney.

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