Every Major Barnes and Noble Class Action Lawsuit

Barnes & Noble class action lawsuits over the past three decades have covered antitrust claims from independent booksellers, a 2012 data breach at store checkout terminals, a shareholder challenge to the company’s purchase of founder Leonard Riggio’s college textbook business, background check paperwork under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, overtime pay for store managers, digital course material pricing, defective Nook chargers, and disability discrimination. Some produced multimillion-dollar settlements. Others were thrown out entirely. What follows is a case-by-case rundown of the most significant actions against the bookseller and its affiliates.

The 2012 PIN Pad Data Breach Case

In September 2012, Barnes & Noble discovered that hackers had installed skimming devices on point-of-sale PIN pads at 63 stores in nine states, including New York, California, Illinois, and Florida. The tampered terminals captured credit and debit card numbers along with PINs. The company pulled the PIN pads from every store and notified card issuers but, at federal investigators’ request, waited about six weeks before disclosing the breach publicly.¹

A putative consumer class action, In re Barnes & Noble Pin Pad Litigation (No. 12-cv-08617), was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Plaintiffs alleged breach of implied contract, invasion of privacy, and violations of Illinois and California consumer protection statutes, citing bank account holds, inability to use cards, emotional distress, and credit monitoring costs.²

The case was dismissed three times. The original complaint fell in 2013 for lack of Article III standing. After the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Remijas v. Neiman Marcus Group, the first amended complaint cleared the standing bar but was dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6) for failing to allege viable injuries. On June 13, 2017, Judge Andrea R. Wood dismissed the second amended complaint with prejudice, holding that none of the alleged injuries — including lost value of personal information, time spent dealing with banks and police, and emotional distress — amounted to cognizable harm. Further amendment, she ruled, would be futile. The ruling set a marker in that district: data breach plaintiffs needed to allege actual out-of-pocket monetary losses beyond minimal amounts to survive dismissal.³

The 2001 Antitrust Settlement With Independent Booksellers

In 1998, twenty-six independent bookstores and the American Booksellers Association sued Barnes & Noble and Borders Books under the federal Robinson-Patman Act. The independents claimed publishers gave the chains special discounts and favorable terms unavailable to smaller competitors, amounting to illegal price discrimination.⁴

Discovery uncovered what plaintiffs described as a sham wholesaling arrangement between Barnes & Noble and a distributor called Bookazine designed to secure wholesaler-level discounts through kickbacks. Evidence also showed that Ingram Book Company gave the chains discounts of 42 to 43 percent, plus additional incentive payments and more lenient payment terms, compared to the 40 percent discount and tighter deadlines offered to independents.⁴

The case hit a serious setback before trial when U.S. District Judge William Orrick ruled that the ABA could not seek damages because it had not presented concrete evidence of financial harm. That limited the case to prospective relief and put it before a judge rather than a jury.⁴ Rather than press on with what had already grown into an $18 million litigation campaign, the ABA settled in April 2001 for $4.7 million.⁵ ABA President Neal Coonerty said the suit had nonetheless improved the discounts and terms available to independents compared with when it was filed seven years earlier.

The Riggio College Booksellers Shareholder Suit

In 2009, Barnes & Noble acquired Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, a textbook company owned by founder and chairman Leonard Riggio, in a deal valued at $596 million. Shareholders filed a derivative lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court alleging the transaction was not “entirely fair” to Barnes & Noble and that Riggio had used his position to push it through for his own benefit.⁶

In re Barnes & Noble Stockholder Litigation (C.A. No. 4813-VCS) settled for $29 million. Rather than a cash payout, the settlement reduced the principal and interest payments Barnes & Noble still owed Riggio from the acquisition, effectively recovering the money for the company. Delaware Chancery Court Judge Leo Strine granted final approval on September 4, 2012.⁷

Background Check Disclosure Class Action

Vicki Hebert applied for a job at Barnes & Noble in 2018 and was handed a background check disclosure form that contained language unrelated to consumer reports. She alleged that violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires such disclosures to consist solely of the background check authorization. Hebert filed a putative class action in California Superior Court in San Diego in 2019.⁸

The trial court initially granted summary judgment for Barnes & Noble. The California Court of Appeal reversed that decision on April 19, 2022, finding a reasonable jury could conclude Barnes & Noble acted recklessly by delegating FCRA compliance to a human resources employee who, by his own admission, knew very little about the statute, and by using the noncompliant form for nearly two years without any monitoring. The court rejected Barnes & Noble’s argument that the extra language was an inadvertent drafting mistake.⁹

The case settled for $600,000. The class period covered applicants from February 6, 2014, through December 8, 2023, with a claim deadline of September 1, 2023. The court held a final approval hearing on December 8, 2023.¹⁰

Overtime Pay Cases Over Manager Classification

Barnes & Noble has faced repeated litigation over whether its store managers and assistant store managers were properly classified as exempt from overtime. A California suit filed in 2005 alleged assistant store managers were misclassified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act despite spending their time on non-managerial work such as operating cash registers and processing returns. That case pushed Barnes & Noble to reclassify its California assistant managers as nonexempt, but the company did not extend the reclassification nationwide until 2010.¹¹

A national class action followed in New York in January 2013. In July 2014, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl denied Barnes & Noble’s motion to dismiss, ruling that unresolved questions remained about whether the assistant managers’ actual duties qualified them for exemption.¹² He noted that because Barnes & Noble had reclassified California employees after the 2005 suit but waited five years to do the same nationally, a jury could view the delay as a willful violation, extending the FLSA statute of limitations from two to three years.¹¹

In a separate California action involving store managers, a step above assistant managers, a court denied class certification in October 2014, finding the plaintiff had not shown that common issues predominated or that a class action was the superior method of adjudication.¹³

The Inclusive Access Textbook Antitrust Case

In January 2020, a group of independent off-campus college bookstores filed a class action in Delaware federal court against major textbook publishers and retailers, including Barnes & Noble Education, Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill, Cengage Learning, and Follett Higher Education Group. The plaintiffs alleged the defendants conspired to use “inclusive access” programs, which bundle digital course materials and bill them directly to students through their schools, to monopolize the college textbook market and squeeze independent retailers out.¹⁴

The complaint accused the defendants of dressing anticompetitive behavior as technological innovation. It said the opt-out mechanisms offered to students who did not want inclusive access were opaque and deliberately hard to navigate, effectively trapping students into buying materials through the defendants’ channels at inflated prices.¹⁵

The cases were consolidated as a multidistrict proceeding in the Southern District of New York (In re Inclusive Access Course Materials Antitrust Litigation, No. 20-md-2946). On June 14, 2021, Judge Denise L. Cote dismissed the entire case, finding that the defendants’ parallel adoption of digital course material models was a common response to a Department of Education policy change rather than evidence of conspiracy. “A motive to innovate is different than a motive to conspire,” she wrote. The court also ruled that student plaintiffs lacked standing under the indirect purchaser rule and that the retailer plaintiffs failed to show broader competitive harm.¹⁶

Nook Charger Defect Suit

In October 2015, a class action titled Hainley v. Barnes and Noble Inc. (No. 5:15-cv-05513) was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The plaintiff alleged that charging cables for the Nook Color and Nook Simple Touch e-readers frayed and exposed wires after a few months of normal use, leaving the devices unable to charge or transfer data. The complaint said Barnes & Noble knew of the problem from hundreds of customer complaints on its own website and other retail platforms but did not recall the cables or provide lasting replacements. It alleged breaches of both implied and express warranties.¹⁷

EEOC Disability Discrimination Suit

On September 25, 2025, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit against Barnes & Noble College Booksellers in the Northern District of California (EEOC v. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, No. 3:25-cv-08142). The agency alleges the company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing a reasonable accommodation to a cashier and bookseller at its Hayward, California, store who had been diagnosed with postpartum depression after going into pre-term labor in February 2021. According to the EEOC, the employee requested unpaid leave beyond the company’s 90-day maximum, and Barnes & Noble fired her in April 2021 after encouraging her to resign.¹⁸

Barnes & Noble filed its answer to the complaint in January 2026, and as of May 2026 the case remains active. A case management scheduling order was entered in late April 2026.¹⁹

The Barnes & Noble Education Securities Investigation

One separate note on the corporate structure: Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. (NYSE: BNED) is a publicly traded company legally distinct from the Barnes & Noble retail chain. It became the subject of securities law scrutiny in mid-2025. On July 18, 2025, the company disclosed in an SEC filing that its annual report for the fiscal year ended May 3, 2025 would be delayed while its Audit Committee investigated how the costs of digital sales had been recorded. Early findings suggested accounts receivable may have been overstated by up to $23 million. The company’s stock dropped more than 21 percent on July 21, 2025, falling $2.36 per share to close at $8.87.²⁰

By November 2025, BNED announced the internal investigation was complete. The Audit Committee determined that a single, now-terminated employee in the payment processing department had acted alone in making unsupported manual journal entries that improperly reduced cost of sales in fiscal years 2024 and 2025.²¹ The company issued restated financial statements for certain periods within fiscal 2025 and the full fiscal year ended April 27, 2024, and eventually filed its delayed annual report with the SEC.²²

Multiple law firms have sought lead plaintiffs for a potential securities class action against BNED tied to the accounting disclosures, alleging the company issued materially misleading financial information. As of mid-2026, BNED continues to list the investigation and related costs as risk factors and has acknowledged the need to remedy weaknesses in its internal controls over financial reporting.²²

1
Mintz. Barnes & Noble PIN Pad Devices Hit by Hackers
2
Alston & Bird. Northern District of Illinois Dismisses Barnes & Noble Data Breach Lawsuit
3
Hunton Andrews Kurth. Putative Data Breach Class Action Dismissed for Third Time
4
Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Booksellers Settle Lawsuit Against Chains
5
Foundation for Economic Education. Put Robinson-Patman, Not Bookstore Chains, on Trial
6
Kahn Swick & Foti. Court Approves $29 Million Settlement in Barnes & Noble
7
Bloomberg. Barnes & Noble’s Riggio Investor Suit Settlement Approved
8
HRD America. Barnes & Noble Sued for Alleged Breach of Fair Credit Reporting Act
9
FindLaw. Hebert v. Barnes & Noble, Inc.
10
Top Class Actions. Barnes & Noble FCRA $600K Class Action Settlement
11
BAM Law. California Labor Lawsuit Led to Class Action v. Barnes & Noble
12
Law360. Barnes & Noble Can’t Close Book on Wage and Hour Action
13
Quinn Emanuel. Victory: Wage-Hour Class Action Victory
14
Bloomberg Law. McGraw-Hill, B&N Accused of Online Course Materials Monopoly
15
ClassAction.org. Campus Book Company v. McGraw-Hill Global Education Holdings
16
Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. McGraw-Hill, Pearson Dodge Antitrust Suit Over Online Coursework
17
Top Class Actions. Barnes & Noble Hit With Defective Nook Charger Lawsuit
18
EEOC. EEOC Sues Barnes & Noble College Booksellers for Disability Discrimination
19
CourtListener. EEOC v. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers
20
Rosen Law Firm. Barnes & Noble Education, Inc.
21
Barnes & Noble Education. Barnes & Noble Education Announces Preliminary Full-Year Fiscal 2025 and Year-to-Date Fiscal 2026 Unaudited Financial Results
22
Barnes & Noble Education. Barnes & Noble Education Form 10-Q, Quarter Ended November 1, 2025