Washington Supreme Court Cuts Privacy Act Exposure for Website Tracking Pixels

Orrick reports that the Washington Supreme Court decided Baker v. Seattle Children's Hospital, holding that the Washington Privacy Act does not reach the website-operator conduct at issue involving tracking pixels on a public-facing page. The firm frames the ruling as a significant win amid a growing wave of pixel-tracking and "wiretap" class actions. Because the available account is a defense-side summary and the quoted holding is truncated, the precise scope — what conduct was excluded, and whether the court addressed consent, data-security duties, or vendor arrangements — should be confirmed against the opinion itself.

The decision matters well beyond Washington. State privacy statutes with private rights of action have increasingly been used to allege that third-party analytics, chat and pixel scripts effect unauthorized "captures" of communications. Defense counsel will mine the reasoning for dismissal and narrowing arguments in other forums, and plaintiffs will test its limits in Washington.

Practical next steps: inventory pixel, tag-manager and third-party script deployments against the decision's logic; assess vulnerability of pending wiretap and privacy class-action theories; and check whether consent obligations imposed by contract, sectoral regimes, or other state statutes survive the holding. Watch also for legislative responses in Washington.