Malinda Smidga v. Spirit Airlines Inc

── Malinda Smidga v. Spirit Airlines Inc ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Date: May 26, 2026 Category: General NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ________________ No. 24-1757 ________________ MALINDA A. SMIDGA, KAYLA MANDENG, FRANCES CURD, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Appellants v. SPIRIT AIRLINES, INC. ________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2:22-cv-01578) District Judge: Honorable Marilyn J. Horan ________________ Submitted under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on September 11, 2025 Before: CHAGARES, Chief Judge, PORTER and ROTH, Circuit Judges (Opinion filed: May 26, 2026) ________________ OPINION * ________________ * This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. ROTH, Circuit Judge Appellants Malinda Smidga, Frances Curd, and Kayla Mandeng, as representatives for class action members, filed a class action against Spirit Airlines, Inc. (Spirit) for its alleged use of a third-party software, Session Replay Code (SRC), to record and intercept the communications of its website visitors. The District Court granted Spirit’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, finding that the class representatives failed to establish an injury-in-fact necessary for standing to file suit. Because Appellants’ allegations do not support their claim that they suffered concrete injury to their privacy interests, we conclude that the District Court is correct. We will therefore affirm the District Court’s dismissal, but modify its order, so that the dismissal will be without prejudice. I. 1 Appellants—hailing from Pennsylvania (Smidga), Maryland (Curd), and California (Mandeng)—each visited Spirit’s website to browse flights. Only Mandeng purchased flight tickets through the website, and she specifically alleged that she inputted the names, addresses, and ages of herself and her children when doing so. Appellants brought a consolidated amended complaint (First Consolidated Amended Complaint), claiming that unbeknownst to website users, Spirit’s SRC recorded the users’ interactions with the 1 Because we write for the parties, we recite only those facts necessary to our disposition. 2 website in real time, including text entries, mouse clicks, and geolocation. 2 Spirit filed a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of standing, and attached a declaration of Spirit’s Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer disputing Appellants’ allegations that Spirit uses the relevant software to collect personal information from site visitors. 3 The declaration specified that Spirit has “never enabled” the software functions that could be used to collect such information and that any data Spirit collects is “not traceable to any specific [w]ebsite user.” 4 The District Court dismissed the complaint with leave to request jurisdictional discovery and again amend the complaint. Appellants did neither. The District Court then dismissed the complaint with prejudice, and this appeal f