Catholic priest sues Grindr after data sale outed him

Jeffrey Burrill, a Catholic priest, has filed a lawsuit against queer dating app Grindr, saying that it released his data and thus cost him his job and reputation.

Monsignor Burrill began using Grindr in 2017. It felt safe because there was no indication – at least to him – that people outside of the app could access his data.

To Burrill, secrecy was crucial. As the top administrator of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), he had taken a vow of celibacy, and Catholic teaching opposes sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage.

But in 2021, a Catholic media website found out Burrill had been using Grindr and reported it. Soon, the USCCB asked him to resign.

Now, in a lawsuit filed against the app in California Superior Court, Burrill says that Grindr did not protect his data and inform him that data vendors could actually access it – which it did.

Burrill resigned when the Pillar, an online newsletter covering the Catholic Church reported about his visits to gay bars and said that it had collected the information from Grindr.

Burrill’s lawsuit alleges that the Pillar received the data from the Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal (CLCR), a nonprofit in Denver that aims to “support the commitment of Roman Catholic clergy to living the teaching of the Church and of Holy Scripture.”

According to Burrill’s lawsuit, Grindr sold his data from between 2017 and 2021 to companies and data vendors, and CLCR said last year that it bought the “publicly available data” in an “ordinary way.”

“It became clear that heterosexual and homosexual hookup apps were used by some seminarians and some priests in some places, and with volumes and patterns suggesting those were not isolated moral lapses by individuals,” Jayd Henricks, the president of CLCR, wrote.

James Carr, an attorney representing Burrill, asked Grindr to compensate Burrill $5 million. The company didn’t agree, and a lawsuit was filed. It is requesting damages and an order that would prevent the app from releasing users’ data without prior notice.

A spokeswoman for Grindr told The Washington Post that the company “intends to respond vigorously to these allegations, which are based on mischaracterizations of practices relating to user data.”

Still, Grindr has already been accused of not protecting its users' privacy. In April, another lawsuit claimed that the app shared users’ HIV statuses, for example, and in July, a Norwegian court ordered Grindr to pay a fine over the company’s practice of sharing sensitive user data with advertisers.