WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar investor class action against Facebook parent Meta to proceed, stemming from the privacy scandal involving political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

The justices heard arguments in November in Meta’s attempt to drop the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided they were wrong to open the case in the first place.

The Supreme Court rejected the company’s appeal and left an appeal decision allowing the case to proceed.

Investors argue that Meta did not fully disclose the risks of Facebook users’ personal information being misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.

Inadequacies in the disclosures led to two significant drops in the company’s share price in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, investors say.

Meta has already paid $5.1 billion in fines and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.

Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump’s political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer to access the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. This data was then used to target American voters during the 2016 campaign.

The lawsuit is one of two Supreme Court cases involving class-action lawsuits against technology companies. The courts are also grappling with whether to drop a class action lawsuit against Nvidia. Investors say the company misled them about its reliance on selling data chips for mining volatile cryptocurrencies.

Associated Press, Associated Press