Everything that follows is an allegation, and a court has not ruled on any of it. On July 29, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in federal court against Hims & Hers Health, Inc., and as of August 6 the agency’s own case page still lists the matter as pending with a single entry on its timeline. What is worth understanding regardless of how the case turns out is the pair of consumer-protection laws the FTC says were violated, because those laws govern every subscription you have ever signed up for online.
One filing, one docket entry, and a case status of Pending
The FTC’s case page for the matter carries the caption in full: “Federal Trade Commission; THE People of the State of California, acting by and through Los Angeles County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison; and Utah Division of Consumer Protection, Plaintiffs, v. Hims & Hers Health, Inc., Defendant.” The federal court is the Northern District of California. The case status is listed as Pending, and the timeline contains one item, dated July 29, 2026: a “Complaint for Permanent Injunction, Monetary Judgment, Civil Penalty Judgment, and Other Relief.”
Note who the co-plaintiffs actually are, because the shorthand blurs them. Utah appears through its Division of Consumer Protection. California appears as the People of the State of California, acting by and through Los Angeles County Counsel. The Commission vote authorizing staff to file was 2-0.
The agency attaches its own caution to filings like this one. The Commission files a complaint when it has “reason to believe” that the named defendants are violating or are about to violate the law, and, in the FTC’s words, “the case will be decided by the court.” Reason to believe is a threshold for bringing a case, not a conclusion about whether the conduct occurred.
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The intake form the FTC alleges starts a subscription
The first allegation concerns what happens between filling out a form and being billed. The FTC alleges that Hims does not give most consumers a consultation with a provider. Instead, according to the agency, by submitting their intake form, most consumers will unknowingly be charged for and subscribed to a prescription treatment.
The significance is in the sequencing. A form that a person reasonably reads as a request, submitted in the expectation that a professional will look at it and get back to them, is alleged to function instead as an order and an enrollment. If that is what happened, the consumer’s moment of decision was moved earlier than they realized, to a screen that did not look like a checkout.
The cancellation button the complaint says was hidden
The second allegation is about getting back out. In its announcement of the case, the agency says the company “makes it extremely difficult to cancel its subscriptions,” and describes the mechanism this way: “the company made it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions by hiding the cancellation button from consumers, the FTC alleges. The button appeared only after these consumers selected an option to ‘add/remove items from order’ and navigated several steps before they even saw the word ‘cancel.’”
That description is worth reading twice, because it is not an allegation that cancellation was impossible. It is an allegation that the word itself was placed where a person would not think to look, behind a menu item about editing an order. A path that exists but cannot reasonably be found is the specific thing subscription law is written to address.
Meta, Snap, and the privacy promise at issue
The third allegation is separate from billing entirely. The complaint alleges that Hims shared consumers’ sensitive health information with third-party advertising platforms such as Meta and Snap despite promising to protect patient privacy.
The word sensitive carries the weight there. This is a telehealth company, so the categories of information involved are the conditions people are seeking treatment for, which is the kind of thing most people would not disclose to a neighbor, let alone to an advertising platform. Whether the sharing occurred and whether it broke a promise are questions for the court. The allegation is on the record.
The FTC Act, ROSCA, and what they ask of any subscription seller
Two laws are named. “The FTC alleges these practices have violated the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act,” the agency says, and the state plaintiffs bring their own claims under Utah and California law.
Setting this company aside, those requirements are general and they are useful to know. The FTC’s guidance for businesses on payments and billing puts the baseline plainly: businesses must take steps to ensure that charges to customers’ credit cards, debit cards, phone bills and other accounts are authorized, and it is illegal to bill people for negative options, automatic shipments or continuity programs without their express consent.
A negative option is any arrangement where your silence counts as a yes and the charge keeps repeating until you act. Free trials that convert, auto-refill plans and monthly memberships all sit in that family. The consent has to be express, which is why a checkout screen that buries the recurring terms, or a cancellation flow that hides where the exit is, is a legal problem and not merely an annoying design.
No money has been awarded, and there is no refund program
This point needs stating precisely, because cases like this generate confusion and, sometimes, opportunists. The filing is captioned as a complaint seeking a permanent injunction, monetary judgment, civil penalty judgment and other relief, so money is on the table as a request. It has not been granted. No settlement exists, no consent order exists, no judgment exists, and there is no consumer refund program in this matter.
The practical consequence is simple. There is nothing to claim, no form to submit and no administrator sending payments, so anyone contacting you about collecting a Hims & Hers payout is not doing so on behalf of this case. The verification is public and takes a minute: the FTC’s own case docket for Hims & Hers showed exactly one entry, the July 29, 2026 complaint, and a case status of Pending when it was checked on August 6, 2026.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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