• by Wendy Davis , April 3, 2026

Weighing in on a battle between Hearst TV and an app user, the Trump administration is urging an appellate court not to invalidate the federal video privacy law.

"This Court should not conclude that the VPPA is unconstitutional in any respect," the Department of Justice argues, using an acronym for the Video Privacy Protection Act. That law, passed in 1988, generally prohibits video companies from disclosing people's identifiable video-viewing history without their consent.

The administration's papers come in a dispute dating to 2023, when Hearst TV app user Michelle Saunders claimed in a class-action complaint that the company violated the video privacy law by allegedly sharing app users' video-viewing history -- along with device identifiers and geolocation data -- with Google Ad Manager and Braze, an engagement platform. Saunders later dropped out of the litigation and was replaced by Charles Therrien.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns in Boston dismissed Therrien's suit last year. Stearns ruled that Therrien failed to prove that data transmitted by Hearst could identify him. Hearst sent some location data to both companies, and the Android advertising ID (a resettable string of numbers) to Google, according to the ruling.

Stearns also ruled that the Android advertising ID disclosed to Google was not identifiable in itself.

Therrien had also argued that Hearst disclosed his email address to Blaze, but Stearns ruled that even if that address was personally identifiable, the disclosure fell within an exception to the video privacy law because it was made in the ordinary course of business.

Therrien is now appealing that decision to the 1st Circuit. Large swaths of his brief have been blacked out, but the portions that are publicly available argue that the information disclosed by Hearst was identifiable, and not covered by any exceptions in the statute.

Hearst is urging the appellate court to uphold Stearns' ruling for several reasons. Among other arguments, the company said the evidence showed that Thierren could not be personally identified from the geolocation data because only a single datapoint was shared -- a public church that at least 75 people attended.

Hearst also argues that applying the Video Privacy Protection Act to its disclosures regarding Thierren would violate the First Amendment.

Thierren "asks this Court to apply the VPPA as a sweeping restriction on routine, non-public communications essential to modern digital journalism," Hearst wrote.

"Applied as broadly as urged by appellant, the VPPA would function as a blunderbuss content- and speaker-based restriction," the company wrote, elaborating that the statute should be considered content-based because it only applies to prerecorded videos, and speaker-based because it only applies to companies that offer video.

The Department of Justice urged the appellate court to avoid ruling on the constitutionality of the law, but said that if the court decides to address Hearst's First Amendment claims, they should be rejected. 

"Although it is not at all clear that any constitutional question is presented here, the United States identifies significant flaws in Hearst’s analysis," the government writes.

"As the name suggests, the Video Privacy Protection Act is a privacy statute, protecting sensitive information without regard to the content of any message in which the disclosure might be contained," the Justice Department wrote. "The VPPA’s underlying privacy and intellectual freedom rationales are content-agnostic and the VPPA applies to disclosures of video viewing history without regard for the underlying idea or message expressed in the video."

The Justice Department added that the government has a "substantial" interest in protecting consumers' privacy, and that people's video-viewing history "may reveal a variety of private details."

"For example, disclosure of what news videos a person watched could reveal information about a person’s political affiliation or personal interests; disclosure of what weather videos a person watched could reveal a person’s location, or perhaps upcoming travel plans," the Justice Department writes.

Thierren is expected to file additional arguments by April 22.