People who browsed babycenter.com after rejecting cookies may be covered by a proposed class action alleging BabyCenter, Everyday Health and Ziff Davis let Google, LiveRamp and dozens of other ad-tech companies keep collecting their pregnancy and parenting browsing data after they clicked “Do Not Consent.” No class has been certified and there is nothing to file yet.
Allegations Only · No Settlement Yet
This article describes a class action complaint. The statements below are unproven allegations. BabyCenter, LLC, Everyday Health, Inc. and Ziff Davis, Inc. have not been found liable, there is no certified class, and nothing to claim at this time. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
What Is the BabyCenter Cookie Tracking Lawsuit?
A proposed class action filed on September 22, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California accuses the companies behind babycenter.com of ignoring visitors who turned down tracking cookies. The case is Reimer v. BabyCenter, LLC, et al., No. 2:26-cv-10783, and it names three defendants: BabyCenter, LLC; Everyday Health, Inc.; and Ziff Davis, Inc. According to the complaint, BabyCenter operates within the Everyday Health Group’s Pregnancy & Parenting division, Everyday Health is a wholly owned Ziff Davis subsidiary, and Ziff Davis is BabyCenter’s ultimate parent.The complaint alleges that babycenter.com offered visitors a choice between “I Consent” and “Do Not Consent,” and that choosing “Do Not Consent” did not stop the site from sending browsing data to Google, LiveRamp and dozens of other advertising and analytics companies. Because BabyCenter is a pregnancy and parenting site, the lawsuit argues, that data revealed things like a visitor’s due date, how far along a pregnancy was and a child’s age. The plaintiff demands a jury trial. No court has ruled on any of the allegations, and the case was filed only days ago, so the defendants have not yet had to answer it.
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What the BabyCenter Cookie Banner Told Visitors
The complaint says California visitors to babycenter.com were shown a pop-up titled “Your privacy is important to us.” The banner, as quoted in the filing, said the site shares “information about the way you interact with our website, including health information interests, with our advertising and analytics partners,” and asked visitors to click “I Consent” to allow that or “Do Not Consent” if they did not. After a visitor chose “Do Not Consent,” the banner closed and browsing continued.The lawsuit also points to BabyCenter’s privacy policy, which it says describes relying on consent only where a user has given “prior, express consent,” and recognizes a right to object to the use of sensitive personal information, including health information. The plaintiff argues that, read together, the banner and the policy told visitors that refusing consent would keep their browsing away from the site’s advertising and analytics partners.
What the Complaint Says Happened After “Do Not Consent”
Using browser network-inspection tools, the plaintiff’s lawyers say they recorded babycenter.com continuing to send requests, cookies and identifiers to third-party domains after “Do Not Consent” was selected. The complaint describes Google’s collection (through DoubleClick, Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager) and LiveRamp’s (through its rlcdn.com and pippio.com identity-resolution services) in the most detail, and says those two are illustrations rather than the full list. It names 36 recipients in all, Google and LiveRamp included, among them Microsoft, Amazon, The Trade Desk, Magnite, Index Exchange, TripleLift, OpenX, Comscore, Yahoo, Criteo, Outbrain, Adobe and Temu. None of those companies is a defendant.The complaint makes several further allegations about how the tracking worked:
- Third-party cookies and network requests fired before the cookie banner even appeared, so data was flowing before visitors had any chance to accept or refuse.
- Within milliseconds of a visitor choosing “Do Not Consent,” the site sent Google an event named “zdconsent_RejectedAll” — which, the plaintiff argues, shows the defendants’ own systems recorded the refusal and then kept sharing data anyway.
- The defendants control the consent-management settings that decide which tags may fire after a refusal, so, the complaint says, whether refusals were honored was up to them rather than the third parties.
What Data the Lawsuit Says Was Shared
The complaint alleges that the data leaving babycenter.com was far more specific than a generic page visit:- Ad requests to Google carried custom parameters encoding the content category, pregnancy stage, child age and article or video topic, along with audience segments the site had already assigned to the visitor.
- Every ad request carried a “publisher-provided identifier” — a persistent ID the complaint says BabyCenter itself assigned to each visitor — which the lawsuit argues handed Google a way to recognize the same user.
- Page addresses from the site’s tools, including the Pregnancy Due Date Calculator and the Ovulation Calculator, were transmitted along with ad requests, as were on-site search terms, which the complaint says appear in results-page addresses passed on to third parties.
- Google’s IDE and APC advertising cookies and LiveRamp’s pxrc and rlas3 cookies were set on visitors’ browsers after they refused consent.
LiveRamp’s role gets particular attention. The complaint describes LiveRamp as an identity-resolution service that links identifiers across websites, devices and hashed email addresses, and alleges that its presence means pregnancy-related browsing “can be tied not merely to an anonymous cookie but to a person.” None of these allegations has been tested in court.
Who Is in the Proposed Class?
The complaint proposes two groups:- Nationwide Class: all persons who browsed babycenter.com after rejecting some or all cookies, within the applicable statute of limitations.
- California Subclass: all persons who did the same while in California.
The Federal Wiretap Act and breach-of-contract claims are brought for the nationwide class; the other nine claims are brought for the California Subclass. Judges, the defendants and their affiliates, and the lawyers on both sides are excluded. Both definitions are proposals only. A judge would have to certify a class before anyone is formally part of the case, and the definitions can change before then.
The definition turns on having rejected cookies. A visitor who clicked “I Consent” would not fall within either group as written, while one who clicked “Do Not Consent” or turned off some cookie categories would.
Legal Claims and What the Lawsuit Seeks
The complaint brings 11 claims:- Invasion of privacy under the California Constitution
- Intrusion upon seclusion
- Violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, Penal Code § 631 (wiretapping)
- Violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, Penal Code § 632 (recording confidential communications)
- Violation of the Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2510 et seq.
- Violation of the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Penal Code § 502
- Fraud, deceit and/or misrepresentation
- Unjust enrichment
- Breach of contract
- Negligent misrepresentation
- Intentional misrepresentation
The lawsuit asks the court to certify the classes, declare the conduct unlawful and order it stopped. It seeks damages, including the statutory damages the California Invasion of Privacy Act allows — the greater of $5,000 or three times actual damages for each violation — and the Federal Wiretap Act’s statutory damages of the greater of $100 a day or $10,000. It also seeks punitive damages, restitution and disgorgement, interest, and attorneys’ fees and costs. Those are the plaintiff’s requests, not amounts anyone has been awarded; any recovery would depend on the outcome of the case or the terms of a settlement.
What Happens Next
The complaint says the plaintiff did not discover the alleged tracking until about July 31, 2026, through her lawyers’ investigation, and argues the conduct is ongoing rather than a one-time event — points aimed at heading off a statute-of-limitations defense. The defendants will respond to the complaint, and in cases like this one that response is often a motion to dismiss some or all of the claims. If the case survives, the parties exchange evidence and the plaintiff can ask the court to certify the classes. The case could also settle at any stage.People who used BabyCenter do not need to do anything now. There is no claim form, and nothing is required to stay part of a proposed class. If the case settles or a class is certified, class members are normally notified and told how to file a claim or opt out. The lawsuit is one of a growing number of cases testing whether websites honor cookie refusals; a similar complaint accuses Toyota of tracking visitors who declined cookies, and another makes comparable claims about the Fender website’s cookie banner.
Questions
Can I get money from the BabyCenter lawsuit right now?
No. The case was filed on September 22, 2026 and is at the complaint stage. No class has been certified, there is no settlement or judgment, and there is no claim form. BabyCenter, Everyday Health and Ziff Davis have not been found liable. Money would only become available if the case later settles or the plaintiff wins, and a court would then set out who qualifies and how to claim.
Who is in the proposed class?
The complaint proposes a nationwide class of everyone who browsed babycenter.com after rejecting some or all cookies within the applicable statute of limitations, and a California Subclass of people who did so while in California. These are proposed definitions only; a judge has not certified either group.
What was “Do Not Consent” supposed to do?
According to the complaint, the babycenter.com banner told California visitors that the site shares information about how they use it, including health information interests, with advertising and analytics partners, and asked them to click “I Consent” to allow that or “Do Not Consent” if they did not. The lawsuit argues that a reasonable visitor would read “Do Not Consent” as refusing that sharing, and alleges the tracking continued anyway.
Which companies does the complaint say received BabyCenter data?
The complaint focuses on Google (DoubleClick, Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager) and LiveRamp, and lists 34 other recipients, including Microsoft, Amazon, The Trade Desk, Magnite, Index Exchange, TripleLift, OpenX, Comscore, Yahoo, Criteo, Outbrain, Adobe and Temu. None of those companies is a defendant; the lawsuit is against BabyCenter, Everyday Health and Ziff Davis.
What happens next in the BabyCenter case?
The defendants will respond to the complaint, often with a motion to dismiss some or all of the claims. If the case survives, the parties exchange evidence and the plaintiff can ask the court to certify the proposed classes. The case could also settle at any stage. Anyone who used BabyCenter does not need to do anything now.
