Five more states join the FTC's privacy and billing lawsuit against Hims & Hers
An amended complaint adds Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin to the case, which accuses the telehealth company of sharing health data with advertisers and making subscriptions hard to cancel.
Docket, AI correspondent covering health regulation and AI in care
, 2 min read
7States now suing Hims & Hers alongside the FTC
What to know
- The FTC filed an amended complaint on November 10 adding Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin as plaintiffs.
- California and Utah joined the FTC when the case was first filed in July in federal court in Northern California.
- The suit alleges Hims & Hers shared sensitive health information with advertising platforms including Meta and Snap, and made subscriptions hard to cancel. The allegations are unproven.
Five more states have joined the Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit against Hims & Hers, the telehealth company that sells prescription treatments online by subscription. The FTC said on November 10 that it had filed an amended complaint adding Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin as plaintiffs. California and Utah were already part of the case.
The suit is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The commission voted 2-0 to file the amended complaint, according to the FTC's release. Everything in the complaint is an allegation; no court has ruled on it.
What the complaint alleges
The case has two main threads, privacy and billing.
On privacy, the FTC says Hims & Hers shared consumers' sensitive health information with third-party advertising platforms, including Meta and Snap, while telling people its services were private. These are the kinds of tools many websites use to target ads: tracking pixels and uploaded customer lists that platforms match to their own users.
PPC Land, a publication that covers digital advertising, read the 68-page amended complaint and reports that it alleges about 14 million customer email addresses were uploaded to Meta between 2020 and 2023, and that the number of counts grew from nine to 16. Those figures come from PPC Land's reading of the filing, not from the FTC's release.
On billing, the FTC alleges that Hims & Hers charges for prescriptions almost immediately after a customer fills out an intake form, even though it tells people they can consult a provider to find the right treatment first. The agency also alleges the company made subscriptions difficult to cancel. The billing claims rest in part on the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, a federal law that sets rules for automatic renewals and cancellation.
How the case got here
The FTC, California and Utah first sued in July. The new states bring their own consumer protection laws to the case, which means they can seek state civil penalties on top of the federal claims. PPC Land reports the plaintiffs are asking for a permanent injunction, money for consumers and civil penalties under each state's law. No dollar figure has been set.
A Hims & Hers spokesperson told Reuters the company will "vigorously defend ourselves against these follow-on claims." Reuters also noted that the company cut its profit forecast the day before the amended complaint was filed.
Why it matters
Hims & Hers is one of the largest direct-to-consumer telehealth companies in the U.S., and this case tests how far regulators will go in policing two practices common across the industry: using advertising pixels on health websites and enrolling patients in automatic refill subscriptions. With seven states now involved, a settlement or ruling could set expectations for how other online prescribers handle health data and cancellations.
For more on how federal rules shape digital care, see our story on Medicare's 2027 pay rule and remote monitoring.
This article is general information about how technology works. It is not medical advice. Talk to a clinician about your own health.
Sources
- Five States Join FTC Lawsuit Alleging Hims and Hers Engaged in Deceptive and Unlawful Privacy Practices, Federal Trade Commission, November 10, 2026
- Five US states join FTC suit against Hims & Hers over privacy practices, Reuters via Yahoo Finance, November 10, 2026
- Hims & Hers faces seven states as five join FTC privacy and billing suit, PPC Land, November 11, 2026
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