Californians who paid for Tesla's Full Self-Driving package can no longer sue the company as a group, at least for now. On 16 October 2026 a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the order that had certified them as classes, and sent the case back to the district court in San Francisco.
The suit, filed in 2022 on behalf of California FSD buyers, argues that Tesla broke the state's consumer-protection laws by misrepresenting its cars' hardware. At its centre is the claim that the cars had the hardware needed for full self-driving, which, according to Reuters, appeared in the Autopilot section of Tesla's website from about October 2016 to August 2024.
What the court decided
In August 2025 US District Judge Rita Lin certified three classes. Tesla appealed, and a panel of judges Ronald Gould, Jay Bybee and Daniel Bress vacated all three.
| Class certified in August 2025 | Who it covered | After 16 October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Damages class | Californians who bought FSD from 20 October 2016 to 19 May 2017 | Vacated |
| Damages class | Californians who bought FSD from 19 May 2017 to 31 July 2024 and opted out of Tesla's arbitration agreement | Vacated |
| Injunctive class | A subset of those buyers, seeking a court order rather than damages | Vacated |
Judge Lin had already refused to certify a class of Enhanced Autopilot buyers.
Why: buying FSD never required reading the promise
Under the case law the panel applied, a court may presume that every buyer saw a statement in two situations: when it was on the product's label or in material given to every customer, or when it was part of an extensive, long-term advertising campaign. Judge Lin had likened Tesla's website, central to how the company markets its cars, to a label.
The appeals court rejected that comparison. A label is in front of every purchaser, it wrote, but, as Judge Lin herself had found, "there [was] no specific requirement forcing [FSD purchasers] through the Autopilot page to complete their purchase".
Tesla's website-traffic data did not close the gap, and the panel found that the company's other statements did not add up to a campaign. The same problem undid the lower court's treatment of Tesla's statute-of-limitations defence, which turns on what each buyer read on the Autopilot page, where Tesla blamed FSD's delays on regulators. Because the exposure question decided the appeal, the panel did not rule on the plaintiffs' damages model.
What it does not decide
The ruling is an unpublished memorandum and, under the Ninth Circuit's rules, it is not precedent. It does not say whether the hardware statement was false, and the case continues before Judge Lin. The plaintiffs' lawyers told Reuters the panel "did not fully appreciate the unique circumstances here". The US Chamber of Commerce had filed a brief supporting Tesla, which denies the claims.
Why it matters in Europe
The same promise is at the centre of the Dutch-led collective claim, which passed 7,900 European HW3 owners in August. Many of those owners paid up to €7,500 for FSD, in some cases years before any version of it arrived. That claim is being prepared under Dutch law, so a California class ruling has no direct effect on it.
The ruling does show the ground Tesla won on: not whether its cars could drive themselves, but whether every buyer read the promise. Tesla has still given no timeline for upgrading HW3 cars, and in Europe it has started selling the feature as Tesla Assisted Driving instead of Full Self-Driving.