Apple won a motion in US federal court to dismiss parts of a class-action privacy lawsuit related to California privacy law.

Judge Edward J. Davila in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday ruled that the plaintiffs in the case had made technical deficiencies in their arguments related to several California state laws.

Those included including the state’s Invasion of Privacy Act, the state constitution, its unfair competition law, breach of implied contract, and the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act.

Davila said he would give the plaintiffs a final opportunity to amend and refile the complaint “out of an abundance of caution”, but added it was “doubtful” they “can sufficiently plead their dismissed claims given the deficiencies addressed in this Order”.

If the California state legal claims are dismissed, the class action can still proceed based on other claims of violations of consumer protection laws of Illinois, New Jersey, and New York, breach of express contract, and unjust enrichment, which survived a challenge in 2024.

The suit is based on findings in 2022 by a developer that if users turned off an option to share analytics data with Apple, the same data was in fact collected by the company, with there being apparently no difference whether the option was enabled or disabled.

The case is one of several seeking to prevent large tech companies such as Google and Facebook parent Meta from collecting data without consent.

Apple has promoted its privacy controls to consumers as part of its corporate image.

Apple has faced a number of legal cases on issues unrelated to privacy, agreeing, for instance, in 2020 to make payments to consumers over claims it deliberately throttled the speed of older iPhones.

US users began receiving payments under that settlement in 2024.