District Court Finds that Minor Plaintiffs Did Not Consent to Ancestry.com’s Terms and Conditions

Putative class-action plaintiffs allege that Ancestry.com (“Ancestry”) disclosed their confidential information to third parties without their consent in violation of the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act, 410 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 513/1, et seq. (“GIPA”).  Ancestry sought to compel arbitration, and in Coatney v. Ancestry.com DNA, LLC, the District Court denied that motion.

Plaintiffs are minors whose guardians (the Guardians) submitted their DNA for testing.  The Guardians signed up to use Ancestry’s website as early as 2006, and Ancestry’s terms and conditions of service were updated at least ten times before the suit was brought.  The most recent update dates from 2019, and those terms bind both Ancestry and the Guardians, but it is not clear that those terms apply to the Plaintiffs.

The court found that the Guardians agreed to delegate the determination of “gateway issues,” including the question of whether an arbitration agreement exists, to the arbiter.  But the Plaintiffs have no agreement with Ancestry, and so the court had to determine whether they were subject to the same arbitration provisions as the Guardians.  

Ancestry argued that the Plaintiffs were bound by its terms and conditions either because their consent to those terms and conditions was implied by their use of Ancestry’s services to submit their DNA tests or because they authorized their Guardians to execute the relevant consent forms on their behalf.  The court found that whether or not the Plaintiffs could give legally cognizable consent to the submission of their DNA samples, they did not consent to be bound by Ancestry’s terms and conditions.  The court similarly found no evidence that the Plaintiffs had agreed to be bound by the consent forms that the Guardians submitted.  The Plaintiffs did not sign such forms and the forms, on their face, bind only the Guardians.

The court also rejected Ancestry’s arguments that the Plaintiffs were bound by its terms in equity because they benefitted from the Guardians’ submission of the DNA through Ancestry’s website.  But Plaintiffs contend that they neither used nor benefitted from Ancestry’s services.  Rather, the Guardians acted unilaterally in submitting Plaintiffs’ DNA. Plaintiffs deny that they ever used Ancestry’s website or any of its services.  Rather, their genetic information was provided to the Guardians and not to them.  There was thus no equitable basis to hold that Plaintiffs were bound by Ancestry’s terms and conditions.

Accordingly, the court denied Ancestry’s motion to arbitrate.