Eating Recovery Center Lawsuit: Pixel Tracking, CIPA, and SB 24-117

Eating Recovery Center has faced two distinct legal pressures in recent years: a federal class action in California accusing it of leaking visitor data through the Meta Pixel, and patient complaints in Colorado that pushed the state to pass a new oversight law. The Eating Recovery Center lawsuit over pixel tracking, Doe v. Eating Recovery Center LLC, ended on October 17, 2025, when a federal judge granted summary judgment to ERC on every remaining claim. The Colorado complaints produced Senate Bill 24-117, signed into law on June 6, 2024, which imposes new requirements on eating disorder treatment facilities beginning January 1, 2026.

What the Pixel-Tracking Class Action Alleged

In October 2023, a plaintiff proceeding as Jane Doe filed a proposed class action against ERC in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case was assigned to Judge Vince Chhabria as No. 3:23-cv-05561.¹ The court allowed her to sue under a pseudonym in November 2023 because of the sensitivity of the claims.

Doe alleged that ERC embedded the Meta Pixel on its website, and that the pixel collected page URLs, time on page, referrer paths, and click events and sent that data to Meta for targeted advertising.² She said she visited the ERC site in June 2022 while seeking treatment for anorexia, and that the tracking let Meta intercept sensitive health-related communications without her knowledge or consent.³

The complaint brought claims under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), the California Medical Information Act (CMIA), the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL), and common law unjust enrichment. Named defendants included ERC, its founder Dr. Kenneth Weiner, and several affiliated corporate entities, including investment firms involved in ERC’s ownership.⁴

How the Court Ruled

ERC moved to dismiss early. In June 2024, Judge Chhabria denied that motion in part and granted it in part: the CIPA and CMIA claims survived, and the UCL claim was dismissed at the pleading stage.⁵ In February 2025, the court denied ERC’s attempt to join Meta as a necessary party.⁶

The case reached summary judgment in October 2025. On October 17, 2025, Judge Chhabria issued two orders that resolved every remaining claim in ERC’s favor.

On the central CIPA claim, the court accepted that the data collected by the pixel could constitute the “contents” of a communication, but held that Meta did not “read” or attempt to learn those contents while they were “in transit,” as CIPA Section 631(a) requires. The judge compared Meta’s processing to sorting mail rather than reading it, finding that any filtering happened only after the data reached its intended recipient.⁵ Because CIPA is a criminal statute, the court applied the rule of lenity and read the ambiguous language narrowly in ERC’s favor.

A separate order disposed of the CMIA and unjust enrichment claims. The court found Doe was not a “patient” under the CMIA because she had visited the website but never entered a treatment relationship, and it found no evidence to support unjust enrichment.⁵ The case was terminated on October 21, 2025.¹

The Judge’s Criticism of CIPA

Beyond the outcome, the ruling drew attention for what the judge said about the statute. Judge Chhabria called CIPA “a total mess” and “borderline impossible” to apply to modern internet transmissions. He wrote that “courts should not contort themselves to fit the type of conduct alleged in this case into the language of a 1967 criminal statute about wiretapping” and urged the California Legislature to “erase the board entirely and start writing something new.”³

The comments matter to any future plaintiff considering a similar case: healthcare entities have faced at least 19 pixel-tracking lawsuits and more than $100 million in total costs by 2025, but courts in the Northern District of California and elsewhere have narrowed the theories those cases rely on.⁷

Colorado Patient Complaints and Senate Bill 24-117

The other track of legal pressure on ERC did not come through a courtroom. Former patients and providers reported what they described as punitive environments at ERC facilities, with some calling the practices “traumatizing and counterproductive.”⁸ Those complaints were the direct catalyst for Colorado Senate Bill 24-117, “Eating Disorder Treatment & Recovery Programs.”

Sponsored by Senator Lisa Cutter, Senator Faith Winter, and Representative Chris deGruy Kennedy, the bill passed both chambers in spring 2024 and was signed by Governor Jared Polis on June 6, 2024.⁹ It applies to eating disorder treatment facilities statewide, not only to ERC, and imposes the following requirements:

All eating disorder treatment and recovery facilities must hold a designation from the Behavioral Health Administration appropriate to their level of care by January 1, 2026.
Patients may request private, clothed medical examinations conducted outside the view of other patients, and bathroom policies must respect patient privacy.
Facilities must adopt policies that respect patients’ sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion, with specific accommodations for transgender and nonbinary patients.
The Colorado Department of Human Services must adopt rules on the use of involuntary feeding tubes, with an emphasis on informed consent.
The Behavioral Health Administration must issue guidance on the use of restraints and other patient restrictions.

The BHA’s implementation deadline for the designation rules and other requirements is January 1, 2026.⁹ Senator Cutter said the law builds on prior efforts to ensure eating disorder care is “respectful and aligned with current research.”¹⁰ The law does not create a private cause of action against ERC; it creates a regulatory framework the state will enforce through the BHA.

ERC as a Complainant: Insurance Parity

Not every legal filing involving ERC has been against it. In October 2023, ERC and its affiliated Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center submitted formal comments to federal regulators on proposed rules under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. ERC described insurer conduct it called discriminatory, including denials of residential treatment based solely on a patient’s weight gain rather than broader clinical criteria, denials issued without disclosing the medical necessity standards used, and authorizations for residential care limited to increments as short as three days.¹¹

ERC also reported that some insurers had cut telehealth reimbursement rates for eating disorder programs without clinical justification, excluded eating disorders from nutrition counseling coverage while covering the same services for conditions like diabetes, and withheld coverage criteria as “proprietary” when providers requested them.¹¹ Those are regulatory comments rather than litigation, but they are part of the legal record around ERC and its patients’ coverage disputes.

1
CourtListener. Doe v. Eating Recovery Center LLC
2
Bloomberg Law. Virtual Eating Disorder Clinic Can’t Duck Pixel Tracking Lawsuit
3
MS Law Group. Jane Doe v. Eating Recovery Center LLC, Opinion
4
GovInfo. Doe v. Eating Recovery Center LLC
5
Mondaq. California Federal Court Narrows CIPA In-Transit Liability for Common Website Advertising Technology
6
PACER Monitor. Doe v. Eating Recovery Center LLC
7
Inside Class Actions. 2025 Website Wiretapping Roundup
8
Mental Health Colorado. Colorado Mandates New Rules for Eating Disorder Clinics in Response to Patient Complaints
9
Colorado General Assembly. SB24-117 Eating Disorder Treatment and Recovery Programs
10
Colorado Senate Democrats. Senate Approves Cutter Bill to Better Protect Patients at Eating Disorder Treatment Facilities
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U.S. Department of Labor. ERC Pathlight Comments on Proposed MHPAEA Rules