The Blackstone Ancestry lawsuit ended in Blackstone’s favor at the federal appellate level. On May 1, 2023, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Blackstone’s $4.7 billion acquisition of Ancestry.com did not, by itself, amount to a “compelled disclosure” of customers’ genetic information under the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act. A related class action brought on behalf of minors whose DNA had been submitted by their parents is still proceeding, after the same court refused in 2024 to force those claims into arbitration.
The Claim Under Illinois Law
In July 2021, Illinois residents Carolyn Bridges and Raymond Cunningham filed a putative class action against Blackstone in state court, alleging that the private equity firm’s 2020 purchase of Ancestry violated Section 30 of the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA). A similar case, Hogan v. The Blackstone Group Inc., was filed in Kane County a month earlier.1ClassAction.org. Blackstone Acquisition of Ill. Residents’ Genetic Info in Ancestry.com Buyout Violated State Law, Class Action Alleges
GIPA is a 1998 statute that treats genetic testing and genetic information as confidential. It permits release of that information only to the individual tested or to someone that individual has authorized in writing.2Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act (410 ILCS 513) The statute carries real teeth: $2,500 per negligent violation and $15,000 per intentional or reckless violation, plus attorneys’ fees, and it allows plaintiffs to sue on a violation of privacy rights alone, without proving additional harm.
The theory of the case was that Ancestry had paired customers’ genetic test results with personally identifiable information such as names and email addresses, and that transferring ownership of the company to Blackstone effectively forced Ancestry to hand over that protected data to a new owner without any customer’s written consent.3U.C. Berkeley Law. Bridges v. Blackstone, Inc. Section 30 says no person may be “compelled to disclose” the identity of someone who has undergone genetic testing or the results of that testing, and the plaintiffs argued the $4.7 billion deal did exactly that.
Blackstone removed the Bridges case to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. On July 8, 2022, Judge David W. Dugan granted Blackstone’s motion to dismiss, giving the plaintiffs until August 1 to amend. They chose not to, and the court entered judgment on August 16, 2022.4PACER Monitor. Bridges et al v. The Blackstone Group Inc They appealed.
What the Seventh Circuit Decided
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal in a unanimous opinion by Judge Michael Scudder, joined by Judges David Hamilton and Doris Pryor. The court’s holding turned on one question: does buying a company that holds genetic data, without more, count as compelling that company to disclose the data?
The answer was no. Judge Scudder described the complaint as “bare bones,” relying almost entirely on the size of the deal and Blackstone’s financial power to infer that some prohibited disclosure must have occurred. The court called that inference “far too attenuated” to survive under the plausibility standard set by the Supreme Court in Twombly.5FindLaw. Bridges v. Blackstone Inc. The complaint identified no specific term of the acquisition that required Ancestry to hand over protected genetic information.
The structure of the deal mattered to the court’s reasoning. Because the acquisition was an all-stock purchase, Ancestry as a corporate entity continued to exist under new ownership. “All we can say with certainty about Blackstone’s all-stock acquisition of Ancestry is that a change in ownership occurred — nothing more,” Judge Scudder wrote. A “run-of-the-mill corporate acquisition, without more alleged about that transaction,” the opinion concluded, cannot plausibly be treated as a compulsory disclosure under GIPA.6Bloomberg Law. Blackstone Beats Genetic Privacy Suit Over Ancestry Acquisition
The plaintiffs also tried a textual argument. They pointed to language in Section 5 of GIPA about “requests for” protected health information as evidence that Section 30 should sweep more broadly than its literal “compelled to disclose” wording. The court rejected that reading. Section 5, it explained, states legislative intent rather than adding operative language, and other GIPA provisions expressly address “requests” when the legislature meant to reach them.5FindLaw. Bridges v. Blackstone Inc.
The opinion was the first federal appellate interpretation of GIPA, and the court itself noted a “dearth of Illinois precedent” on where the statute’s boundaries lie.
The Separate Case Involving Minors
A different set of plaintiffs raised parallel GIPA claims against Ancestry itself in Coatney v. Ancestry.com DNA, LLC. The plaintiffs were teenagers, aged thirteen to eighteen, whose DNA kits had been purchased by parents or guardians between 2016 and 2019. They alleged that Ancestry disclosed their genetic and personal information to Blackstone during the 2020 acquisition without authorization.7FindLaw. Coatney v. Ancestry.com DNA, LLC
Ancestry did not attack the merits. Instead, it moved to send the case to arbitration under the dispute resolution clause in the Terms and Conditions the guardians had accepted when buying or activating the kits. The district court refused, and on February 15, 2024, the Seventh Circuit affirmed.
Three arguments failed. First, the minors were not bound by an arbitration agreement they had never signed, and the Terms did not say guardians were agreeing on behalf of their children. The Terms in fact called themselves “personal” to the signatory. Second, the minors were not third-party beneficiaries, because the same document stated, “There shall be no third-party beneficiaries to this Agreement.” Third, there was no basis to estop the minors from avoiding arbitration on a benefits theory: the court found no evidence the children had accessed their DNA results or their guardians’ accounts, so any benefit to them was speculative.7FindLaw. Coatney v. Ancestry.com DNA, LLC
The result is that the minors’ GIPA claims stayed in federal court rather than being routed into private arbitration. Coatney and Bridges are distinct cases against distinct defendants, and the Bridges dismissal does not by its own terms dispose of the minors’ theory.
What Ancestry’s Policy Says About Acquisitions
Ancestry’s privacy documents draw a sharp line between marketing uses of genetic data, which require separate explicit consent, and corporate transactions, which do not. The policy states that if Ancestry or its businesses are acquired or transferred, including through bankruptcy, the company may share personal information with the acquiring entity, and it commits that its existing privacy protections “will continue to apply to your Personal Information transferred to the new entity.”8Ancestry. Ancestry Privacy Center The company also says it does not share genetic information with third-party marketers, insurers, or employers, and that sharing de-identified data with researchers requires a separate Informed Consent to Research agreement.9Ancestry. Ancestry Privacy Statement
That acquisition provision is the contractual basis on which the Blackstone deal closed without individual customer consent. It is also what the plaintiffs argued was inadequate under GIPA. The Seventh Circuit did not rule on whether the policy itself was enforceable; it ruled that the complaint failed to plead facts showing a compelled disclosure had actually happened.
What the Ruling Does and Doesn’t Settle
Within the Seventh Circuit, an all-stock corporate acquisition does not, standing alone, expose the buyer to GIPA liability for the target’s stored genetic data. A buyer can acquire a company holding millions of genetic profiles without triggering a “compelled disclosure” claim, so long as a plaintiff alleges nothing beyond the fact that ownership changed.
The court was careful to leave a door open. If a deal were structured differently, or if a complaint pointed to specific terms requiring the target to hand over protected data, the analysis could come out another way. The ruling also does not reach the minors’ claims in Coatney, which continue on their own track. And it is binding federal appellate authority only within the Seventh Circuit; other courts examining acquisitions of genetic-data holders under Illinois law or under other states’ statutes are not required to follow it.
That question is live elsewhere. In Hutcheson v. Verogen, Inc., filed in federal court in San Diego, plaintiffs allege that Verogen’s 2023 sale to Qiagen for $150 million was itself a non-consensual disclosure of genetic data, citing statutes in Alaska, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Oregon.10Courthouse News Service. Genetics Company Attempts To Dismiss Claims It Disclosed Client Data After Acquisition A motion to dismiss was argued before Judge James Simmons on November 12, 2025, with no ruling yet.11CourtListener. Hutcheson v. Verogen, Inc.
The 23andMe bankruptcy in 2025 raised the same underlying question in a different posture. State attorneys general initially objected to any auction of consumer DNA, but ultimately supported the $305 million sale to TTAM Research Institute after conditions were built in requiring existing privacy policies to remain in effect and preserving users’ right to delete their data.12Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. AG Sunday Supports Proposed Sale of 23andMe That Would Protect Consumers’ DNA and Data The bankruptcy judge acknowledged the discomfort of the situation but observed that legislators “have not taken such a firm stance” against selling genetic data.13National Center for Biotechnology Information. The Precarious Future of Consumer Genetic Privacy
For an Illinois consumer whose data was held by Ancestry when Blackstone bought the company, the practical takeaway from Bridges is narrow but firm: the acquisition itself is not a viable basis for a GIPA claim in federal court. Whether some future deal, some future pleading, or some future court reaches a different result is a separate question, and one that other litigation is now testing.