Clearview AI has suffered a legal setback in California after a state appeals court ruled that the company cannot use free speech protections to avoid a biometric privacy lawsuit. In a May 22, 2025 decision, the First District California Court of Appeal rejected Clearview’s attempt to invoke the state’s anti-SLAPP statute, which is intended to block lawsuits targeting constitutionally protected speech.
Biometric Database Not Protected Speech, Court Rules
Clearview had argued that its facial recognition platform, described by the company as a tool that “sorts face photos and presents the results to police”, constitutes protected speech. Its lawyer, Collin Vierra, claimed the system merely displays public images and does not infringe privacy. However, the court disagreed, ruling that Clearview’s commercial activity – harvesting billions of online images to build a searchable biometric database – falls outside the protections of the anti-SLAPP law.
The panel found that the company’s data collection and monetization practices are not expressive conduct, nor do they serve the public interest in a way that justifies First Amendment protections. As a result, the lawsuit against Clearview will proceed, marking a potentially precedent-setting case in the regulation of facial recognition technology in California.
Mounting Legal Challenges and Regulatory Pressure
This ruling adds to a growing list of legal hurdles for Clearview. In March 2025, the company reached a $51.75 million settlement in a biometric privacy class action in Illinois. That deal has drawn criticism for its structure. It provides no immediate payout, instead offering plaintiffs a stake in the company redeemable only if Clearview goes public or is sold. The settlement also included no injunctions to halt Clearview’s current practices.
Elsewhere, an Alberta court upheld a provincial ban on the company’s services earlier this month. In Europe, regulators have levied multimillion-euro fines against Clearview for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), though enforcement has been uneven. In the UK, a privacy fine was overturned on jurisdictional grounds, with the case now under appeal.
Following a 2022 settlement with the ACLU, Clearview is prohibited from offering its services to private companies in the United States. It now limits its business to law enforcement and government agencies, but critics say the platform’s scope still raises significant civil liberties concerns. Advocacy groups argue the technology enables mass surveillance, turning public life into a constant database query and putting individuals into what some call a “perpetual police line-up.”
Clearview has defended its security practices, recently highlighting a perfect score in a SOC 2 audit as evidence of strong internal controls. However, the California court found that privacy violations stem not from potential data breaches but from the core practice of collecting sensitive biometric data without consent.
The decision reinforces a growing legal consensus that commercial biometric surveillance must adhere to privacy standards, regardless of downstream use. As the case proceeds, it could shape how facial recognition companies operate under California law and influence regulatory trends across the United States.
Sources: MLex, Judicial Branch of California
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May 23, 2025 – by Cass Kennedy
