Representative Image of the Eyemart Express website illustrating Meta Pixel tracking and customer interactions with prescription eyewear (AI-generated image)
The court therefore held that the plaintiffs had standing to sue. The panel was Judges Haynes, Higginson and Ho, and Judge Stephen A. Higginson wrote the opinion. The court first addressed standing, the legal requirement that plaintiffs demonstrate a sufficient personal stake in a dispute to bring it before a federal court. Eyemart renewed its argument that the customers lacked standing, but the Fifth Circuit agreed with the district court that the alleged unauthorised disclosure of individually identifiable health information constituted a concrete and particularised injury. It considered the alleged privacy harm comparable to harms recognised in traditional privacy claims.
A Texas federal court dismissed the case with prejudice, but on October 23, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed that decision and remanded the case for further proceedings.
The appeals court said the lower court had focused too narrowly on sample illustrations in the complaint while overlooking other allegations about tracked product views, purchases, appointment details and customer-list uploads. A US eyewear retailer faces a revived privacy lawsuit after a federal appeals court reversed the dismissal of claims that it shared customers’ health-related information with Meta. In Rand v. Eyemart Express , five Facebook users allege that a Meta Pixel tracking tool on the retailer’s website transmitted information about their prescription-eyewear searches, prescription details and eye-exam scheduling activity to Meta without their consent. The court held that the customers had standing and had adequately alleged that their health information was shared with Meta, sending the case back to the district court to reconsider their claims. The ruling does not determine whether Eyemart Express violated any law. The court then examined the two grounds on which the district court had dismissed the case. The first was that the Search Plaintiffs had not adequately alleged that they shared individually identifiable health information with Eyemart. The second was that the plaintiffs had not adequately alleged that their health information was transmitted to Meta. The Fifth Circuit disagreed on both points. It followed the parties’ approach of using HIPAA’s definition of individually identifiable health information as a framework for assessing the allegations. The court explained that such information need not consist solely of a specific diagnosis or prescription. Information relating to a person’s health or the provision of healthcare services may also fall within the definition when it identifies the individual. The Search Plaintiffs alleged that their searches for prescription eyewear and their interactions with eye-exam scheduling services generated information that the Pixel transmitted to Meta. One plaintiff alleged that the tool shared the name and location of the store she visited when scheduling an appointment. The court concluded that these activities could relate to the plaintiffs’ health and the provision of healthcare services. For the Prescription Plaintiffs, the district court had accepted that they shared health information with Eyemart by entering prescription details but found the allegations of disclosure to Meta insufficient. Taken together, those allegations were sufficient to plead that the Pixel transmitted health-related information to Meta. The court stressed that, without discovery, plaintiffs cannot be expected to know much more at this early stage. It explained that a motion to dismiss tests the sufficiency of the pleadings, not the merits of the case. It did not rule that every element of each claim had been established. Instead, it reversed the dismissal on the two grounds it had considered and remanded the case, sending it back to the district court to reconsider the substantive claims. Discovery will be necessary if the district court finds that the plaintiffs have adequately pleaded the elements of their claims.
The court noted that the parties cited, and it knew of, no earlier circuit ruling on Pixel tracking of health information specifically.