FOR PUBLICATION

  UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
       FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

RYAN SIX,                                 No. 23-15887

             Plaintiff-Appellant,            D.C. No.
                                          2:22-cv-00203-
 v.                                            MTL

IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.,

OPINION

             Defendant-Appellee.

      Appeal from the United States District Court
               for the District of Arizona
      Michael T. Liburdi, District Judge, Presiding

         Argued and Submitted May 17, 2024
                  Phoenix, Arizona

                Filed February 24, 2025

 Before: Susan P. Graber, Roopali H. Desai, and Ana de
                 Alba, Circuit Judges.

                Opinion by Judge Desai
2               SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.


                          SUMMARY *


             Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

    Reversing the district court’s dismissal for lack of
subject matter jurisdiction of an action under the Fair Debt
Collection Practices Act, and remanding for further
proceedings, the panel held that the plaintiff had Article III
standing to bring his claim under 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(a)(2),
which prohibits a debt collector from directly
communicating with a consumer in connection with the
collection of any debt when the collector knows that the
consumer is represented by an attorney.
    The panel held that an individual who receives a letter in
violation of § 1692c(a)(2) has constitutional standing to
bring a claim. The panel concluded that both Congress’s
judgment in enacting the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
and a comparison to traditionally recognized harms
established that the plaintiff suffered a concrete injury when
the defendant sent him a letter. Furthermore, the plaintiff’s
harm was both particularized and actual. Because receipt of
the letter in alleged violation of § 1692c(a)(2) inherently
violated the plaintiff’s privacy, he sufficiently alleged actual
harm, rather than a conjectural harm or bare procedural
violation. And there was no dispute that the remaining
elements of standing were met because there was a causal
connection between the injury and the conduct complained
of, and the relief sought would redress the intrusion.


*
 This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
               SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.              3


    The panel addressed additional issues in a separately
filed memorandum disposition.


                         COUNSEL

Russell S. Thompson IV (argued), Thompson Consumer
Law Group PC, Scottsdale, Arizona, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Erin M. McManis (argued), Ember A. Van Vranken
(argued), and Joshua M. Bolen, Carpenter Hazlewood
Delgado & Bolen LLP, Tempe, Arizona, for Defendant-
Appellee.

OPINION

DESAI, Circuit Judge:

    The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”)
prohibits debt collectors from engaging in certain practices,
including directly communicating with a consumer in
connection with the collection of any debt when the collector
knows that the consumer is represented by an attorney. See
15 U.S.C. § 1692c(a)(2). Ryan Six brought a claim against
IQ Data International, Inc. (“IQ”) under § 1692c(a)(2),
alleging that IQ sent him a debt verification letter after he
notified the company that all communications should be sent
to his attorney. The district court dismissed Six’s action for
lack of jurisdiction, ruling that he lacked Article III standing.
On appeal, Six challenges the district court’s dismissal for
lack of jurisdiction, as well as its denial of his motion to
strike affirmative defenses, its resolution of the parties’ joint
4                SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.


discovery dispute based on attorney-client privilege, and its
modified grant of attorneys’ fees. We hold that an individual
who receives a letter in violation of § 1692c(a)(2) has
standing to bring a claim, and thus reverse the district court’s
dismissal for lack of jurisdiction and remand for further
proceedings. 1 In light of our ruling, we need not, and do not,
reach Six’s claim for the denial of his motion to strike
affirmative defenses. 2
                         BACKGROUND
    IQ acquired a debt obligation for Six’s purported breach
of a residential lease. Six learned of the debt and, on August
18, 2021, mailed a letter to Equifax disputing the debt and
requesting documentation of it. The same day, Six’s counsel
mailed a letter directly to IQ providing notice that Six was
represented and that all correspondence should be sent to
counsel.
    On September 2, 2021, IQ received Six’s dispute letter
and submitted an internal request to generate and send the
requested documentation to Six’s mailing address. The next
day, September 3, IQ updated its records to show that it had
processed Six’s counsel’s letter and that direct
communication should cease. But on that same day, IQ also
sent the letter with verification of the debt to Six’s mailing
address.



1
 In a separately filed memorandum disposition, we affirm the district
court’s resolution of the parties’ joint discovery dispute and the court’s
modified grant of attorneys’ fees.
2
 The parties may litigate the affirmative defenses on remand. And in any
event, Six is not precluded from appealing the district court’s denial of
his motion to strike in a future appeal.
               SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.             5


    After receiving the letter, Six sued IQ in the District of
Arizona under 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(a)(2). Six and IQ filed
cross-motions for summary judgment. The district court
dismissed the action for lack of jurisdiction. It ruled that Six
lacked Article III standing because he could not show that
he had suffered an injury in fact. The district court reasoned
that the receipt of one unwanted letter was neither akin to the
traditional types of harm providing a basis for a lawsuit, nor
was it the type of abusive debt collection practice that the
FDCPA was intended to prevent. The district court did not
reach the other arguments in the parties’ cross-motions for
summary judgment and, instead, denied the remainder of the
motions for summary judgment as moot.
                STANDARD OF REVIEW
    We review de novo whether a plaintiff has standing. In
re Zappos.com, Inc., 

 (9th Cir. 2018).
                         ANALYSIS
    Six claims that he has standing because he received an
unwanted letter from IQ after notifying IQ that all
correspondence should be sent to his attorney, resulting in
an invasion of his privacy interests. IQ claims that Six’s
alleged harm is insufficient to establish standing because it
is not analogous to the types of harm traditionally recognized
by American courts. To determine whether Six had standing
to bring his claim, we consider whether he “(1) suffered an
injury in fact, (2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged
conduct of the defendant, and (3) that is likely to be
redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Van Patten v.
Vertical Fitness Grp., LLC, 

 (9th Cir.
2017) (quoting Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 

(2016)).
6              SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.


    An “injury in fact” is “an invasion of a legally protected
interest that is concrete and particularized and actual or
imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Spokeo, 

 (cleaned up) (quoting Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife,

 (1992)). To determine whether there is a
concrete injury, we consider two factors: (1) Congress’s
judgment and (2) a comparison of the alleged harm to harms
traditionally recognized by American courts. TransUnion
LLC v. Ramirez, 

, 425–26 (2021). Tangible
harms, like physical or monetary loss, readily qualify as
concrete injuries, but “[v]arious intangible harms can also be
concrete.” 

. A harm is particularized if it affects the
plaintiff “in a personal and individual way.” Spokeo, 

 (quoting Lujan, 

 n.1).
    We first turn to Congress’s judgment, which can be
“instructive” in determining whether there is a concrete
injury “because Congress is well positioned to identify
intangible harms that meet minimum Article III
requirements.” Id. at 341. Accordingly, we “must afford due
respect to Congress’s decision to . . . grant a plaintiff a cause
of action to sue over the defendant’s violation of [a] statutory
prohibition . . . In that way, Congress may ‘elevate to the
status of legally cognizable injuries concrete, de facto
injuries that were previously inadequate [at] law.’”
TransUnion, 

 (quoting Spokeo, 

). But the existence of a statutory cause of action does
not automatically create standing, and this court must decide
independently whether a concrete injury exists in the context
of the statutory violation. See 

.
     When Congress enacted the FDCPA, it recognized that
“[a]busive       debt     collection    practices    contribute
to . . . invasions of individual privacy.” 

(a).
And with that knowledge, Congress expressly prohibited
              SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.             7


debt collectors from communicating directly with
consumers who the collectors know are represented by
counsel. 

 § 1692c(a)(2); see Ward v. NPAS, Inc., 

 (6th Cir. 2023) (finding that § 1692c(c) protects
consumer privacy). It follows, therefore, that receipt of a
letter from a debt collection agency is the type of
infringement on privacy interests that Congress
contemplated when it enacted the FDCPA. Congress’s
judgment thus supports Six’s claim that he suffered a
concrete injury in the context of the statute and has standing
to sue.
    Next, we assess whether Six has “identified a close
historical or common-law analogue for [his] asserted
injury.” TransUnion, 

. The analogue to the
alleged injury must be a harm that is “traditionally
recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American
courts.” 

 (cleaned up). Intrusion upon seclusion, which
protects the right of privacy, is one such example. 

;
see Van Patten, 

 (“Actions to remedy
defendants’ invasions of privacy, intrusion upon seclusion,
and nuisance have long been heard by American courts, and
the right of privacy is recognized by most states.”).
Furthermore, the alleged harm need not be “an exact
duplicate” of a traditionally recognized harm to be
analogous. TransUnion, 

. A close analogue
exists when the alleged and traditionally recognized harm
are similar in “kind” rather than “degree.” Gadelhak v.
AT&T Servs., Inc., 

 (7th Cir. 2020) (citing
Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 340–42).
    Courts have consistently found that the harm caused by
unwanted communications bears a close relationship to
intrusion upon seclusion. See, e.g., Van Patten, 847 F.3d at
1040–41, 1043 (holding two unwanted text messages in
8              SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.


violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act
(“TCPA”) was a concrete injury); Wakefield v. ViSalus, Inc.,

, 1117–18 (9th Cir. 2022) (affirming Van
Patten post-TransUnion); Gadelhak, 

;
Dickson v. Direct Energy, LP, 

, 348–49 (6th Cir.
2023) (holding that one silently delivered voicemail in
violation of the TCPA was a concrete injury); Lupia v.
Medicredit, Inc., 

, 1191–93 (10th Cir. 2021)
(holding that an unwanted call and voicemail in violation of
the FDCPA was a concrete injury). In Ward, for example, a
debt collector called the plaintiff one time after the plaintiff’s
lawyer attempted to send a cease-and-desist letter to the
collector. 

. The plaintiff sued under
§ 1692c(a)(2), and the Sixth Circuit found that the kind of
harm caused by the unwanted call was closely related to
intrusion upon seclusion. Id. at 580–82. We see no
meaningful difference in this context between making a
phone call and sending a letter.
     When Six notified IQ that it should communicate only
with his counsel, he clearly expressed a desire to be
undisturbed by IQ’s communications. And by sending a
letter after receiving Six’s notification, IQ created the kind
of “irritating intrusion[]” addressed by intrusion upon
seclusion. Gadelhak, 

. As other courts have
held, the fact that IQ sent only one letter does not change the
kind of harm caused. See Lupia, 8 F.4th at 1192 (holding that
a single phone call poses the same kind of harm as intrusion
upon seclusion, although it may not be sufficient to establish
liability). Accordingly, the harm alleged by Six poses “the
same kind of harm recognized at common law—an
unwanted intrusion into . . . plaintiff’s peace and quiet,” id.,
and the harm caused by an unwanted letter, in violation of
               SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.             9


§ 1692c(a)(2), is analogous to the harm caused by intrusion
upon seclusion.
     IQ relies on the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Pucillo v.
National Credit Systems, Inc., 

 (7th Cir. 2023),
to distinguish the kind of harm caused by unwanted letters
from that caused by other types of unwanted
communications. In Pucillo, the plaintiff sued a debt
collector under the FDCPA for sending him two letters
regarding a debt that had been discharged in bankruptcy. 

. The court ultimately concluded that the two letters
Pucillo received were “too far afield from the traditional tort
of intrusion upon seclusion” to establish a concrete injury.

. In reaching its conclusion, the court explained that
the harm caused by the letters differed from that caused by
unwanted text messages:

       Text messages may create an injury because
       they can disrupt a person at anytime,
       anywhere,        thereby   invading    private
       solitude . . . In contrast, postal mail is
       delivered to a mailbox without interrupting
       the recipient’s seclusion. Mail can be picked
       up when, if, and how often the recipient
       chooses, unlike a phone which is usually on
       one’s person or close by throughout the day.
       While receiving a letter can be an irritation,
       we do not see an actionable analogy between
       a letter delivered to a mailbox and automated
       text messages delivered to one’s cell phone.

 (cleaned up).
   We are unpersuaded by this distinction. The line drawn
by Pucillo rests on the degree of harm, rather than the kind
10               SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.


of harm, and the Supreme Court has counseled against this
approach. See Gadelhak, 

 (“But when Spokeo
instructs us to analogize to harms recognized by the common
law, we are meant to look for a ‘close relationship’ in kind,
not degree.”); Pucillo, 66 F.4th at 644–45 (Lee, J.,
dissenting) (noting that the majority opinion’s standing
analysis erred by focusing on the number of letters received
and degree of intrusion caused by mail). Indeed, the Pucillo
court acknowledged that its analysis hinged on degree rather
than kind, commenting that it reserved ruling on “other kinds
of mailings [that] could impact seclusion more
significantly.” Pucillo, 

 n.3. Furthermore,
taking Pucillo’s distinction to its logical extreme
demonstrates that its line-drawing is misguided. Even a
consumer who receives hundreds of unwanted letters could
not establish a harm analogous to intrusion upon seclusion
simply because the letters could be picked up at the
recipient’s choosing. This cannot be the case. Regardless of
when it is picked up, an unwanted letter intrudes on the
recipient’s privacy and, thus, we are unpersuaded by
Pucillo. 3
    In sum, both Congress’s judgment and a comparison to
traditionally recognized harms establish that Six suffered a
concrete injury when IQ sent him a letter. Furthermore, Six’s
harm is both particularized and actual. IQ’s letter was
delivered directly to Six, which affected him in a “personal
and individual way.” Spokeo, 

 (quoting
Lujan, 

 n.1). And because receipt of the letter

3
  Similarly, the factual assumption underpinning Pucillo’s analysis is not
necessarily true: Nothing compels a person to look at text messages at
unwanted times of the day. Just as “[m]ail can be picked up when, if,
and how often the recipient chooses,” Pucillo, 

, so too can
text messages be viewed when, if, and how often the recipient chooses.
              SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.            11


in alleged violation of § 1692c(a)(2) inherently violated
Six’s privacy, he has sufficiently alleged actual harm, rather
than a “conjectural” harm or “bare procedural violation.”
Compare Spokeo, 

 (noting that a formatting
error in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act may not
result in actual harm), with Hall v. Smosh Dot Com, Inc., 

, 988 n.5, 991 (9th Cir. 2023) (finding that a
violation of TCPA § 227(c) for texting a phone number on
the Do-Not-Call Registry established actual harm because an
unsolicited text is inherently an invasion of privacy). Thus,
Six suffered an injury in fact sufficient to establish standing
at this juncture of the case.
    We also conclude that the remaining elements of
standing are met, a conclusion that IQ does not dispute.
There is a “causal connection between the injury and the
conduct complained of,” Lujan, 

, because it
was IQ’s letter itself that caused the intrusion on Six’s
privacy, see 

 (explaining that traceability requires a
connection between the injury and defendant’s alleged
violation, rather than third-party action). And the relief
sought under the FDCPA, including declaratory relief,
statutory damages, and actual damages, would redress the
intrusion. Robey v. Shapiro, Marianos, & Cejda, L.L.C., 

 (8th Cir. 2006). In sum, the district court
improperly dismissed the action for lack of jurisdiction.
    Six argues that we should grant summary judgment in
his favor if we hold that he has standing, but IQ argues that
remand is appropriate if we reverse the district court’s
dismissal for lack of jurisdiction. The district court is best
positioned to rule on the parties’ alternative arguments for
summary judgment in the first instance, and thus we agree
with IQ’s suggestion to remand for further proceedings
12               SIX V. IQ DATA INTERNATIONAL, INC.


consistent with our rulings. 4 See EB Holdings II, Inc. v. Ill.
Nat’l Ins. Co., 

 (9th Cir. 2024)
(declining to reach alternative arguments for summary
judgment in the first instance).
     REVERSED AND REMANDED.




4
  We do not consider the merits of Six’s claim against IQ, and our
holding does not foreclose the availability of the bona fide mistake
defense on remand. Indeed, the minimal amount of time between IQ’s
processing of the letter from Six’s attorney’s and IQ’s mailing of the
disputed letter, coupled with the fact that Six asked IQ for information
to be sent to him, raises serious questions about IQ’s liability.