Headway Lawsuit: Google and LinkedIn Privacy and Labor Claims

Headway, the mental health platform legally known as TherapyMatch Inc., is facing several class action lawsuits. The most active is a federal privacy case in California alleging Headway shared sensitive patient information with Google through website tracking code. A similar Illinois case involving LinkedIn tracking was terminated in May 2025, and a former employee filed a California labor class action in October 2025 alleging unpaid overtime and other wage violations. None of these Headway lawsuits has produced a settlement.

The Google Privacy Class Action

The lead case is M.G. v. TherapyMatch, Inc., filed July 6, 2023, in Alameda County Superior Court and removed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Case No. 23-cv-04422-AMO).¹ The plaintiff, using the pseudonym M.G., alleges Headway embedded Google Analytics tracking code on its website that let Google intercept users’ mental health information in real time without consent.²

According to the complaint, the intercepted information included:

The mental health conditions users searched for
The types of treatment they requested
Preferences for therapist gender and ethnicity
The dates and locations of their appointments

The suit says Headway did not enable Google Analytics’ IP anonymization feature, which allegedly allowed Google to link the intercepted data to individual users through their IP addresses.³ The proposed class covers California users whose data was intercepted by or disclosed to Google through the tracking code during the applicable statute-of-limitations period. Claims are brought under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and HIPAA.² Keller Grover LLP, the Law Offices of Scot D. Bernstein, and Don Bivens PLLC represent the plaintiff.⁴

Where the Case Stands

On September 16, 2024, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín largely denied Headway’s motion to dismiss.¹ The wiretapping and eavesdropping claims under CIPA Sections 631 and 632 were allowed to move forward, along with the invasion-of-privacy claim. The judge found that search terms and URL query strings revealing users’ mental health conditions and provider preferences amounted to “content” under the wiretap statute, and that a user entering mental health information into a healthcare-conduit platform had a reasonable expectation of privacy.⁵

The court dismissed the CMIA and CCPA claims at that stage and barred monetary damages on the invasion-of-privacy claim. But the CMIA dismissal came with leave to amend. The plaintiff filed a third amended complaint, and on May 19, 2025, Judge Martínez-Olguín denied Headway’s renewed motion to dismiss the CMIA claim, finding the amended pleading successfully established that the disclosed information was medical in nature.⁶⁷ The case remains active with no settlement reported.⁴

The LinkedIn Privacy Class Action

A second privacy case, A.G. v. TherapyMatch, Inc. (Case No. 1:24-cv-08776), was filed September 23, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. It alleged Headway embedded the “LinkedIn Insight Tag” on its website, letting LinkedIn intercept sensitive personal and health information without consent.⁸ The complaint said the JavaScript-based tracking code captured therapist names, medical reasons for booking sessions, and appointment dates and times, which LinkedIn then allegedly used for targeted advertising.⁹

The proposed class covered LinkedIn accountholders nationwide, excluding California, who had booked therapy appointments through the Headway site. Claims were brought under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and for negligence, with the amount in controversy estimated to exceed $5 million.⁸

Headway called the allegations “meritless” in October 2024, describing the suit as one of “hundreds of similar lawsuits brought about by predatory firms attempting to extort companies for standard settings on their public company websites.” A company spokesperson said the case “does not involve any patient care or clinical information.”⁹

Court records show the case, assigned to Judge Joan H. Lefkow, was terminated on May 14, 2025. The available records do not specify the basis for termination.¹⁰

Headway in the LinkedIn Consolidated Case

Headway also appears as one of several tracked healthcare sites in a separate consolidated class action against LinkedIn itself. In October 2025, Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Davila denied LinkedIn’s motion to dismiss claims that its Insight Tag collected sensitive medical data from Headway, ReflexMD, CityMD, and Spring Fertility. Judge Davila found it plausible that LinkedIn’s collection was a “highly offensive” intrusion into privacy and said communications between patients and healthcare providers deserve “heightened privacy protection.” Wiretapping claims against LinkedIn were dismissed for failure to show interception “in transit,” with leave to amend.¹¹ Headway is not a defendant in that action.

The California Labor Class Action

On October 6, 2025, former employee Tessa Brower-Walsh filed a class action against Headway in San Diego County Superior Court (Case No. 25CU053855C). Brower-Walsh, who worked at the company from August 2024 to May 2025, alleged Headway misclassified employees as exempt from overtime and violated several parts of the California Labor Code.¹²¹³

The complaint alleges Headway failed to pay required overtime and minimum wages, in part by leaving non-discretionary bonus and incentive compensation out of the “regular rate of pay” calculation. It also alleges the company failed to provide compliant meal and rest periods, failed to provide accurate itemized wage statements under Labor Code Section 226, failed to reimburse employees for required business expenses (including personal cell phone use for work), and failed to pay all wages due at separation. The plaintiff is seeking a jury trial and injunctive relief. The case remains pending, with no class certification or settlement reported.¹²

Consumer Complaints Beyond the Lawsuits

Separate from the litigation, Headway has drawn a large volume of consumer complaints. Its Better Business Bureau profile shows 336 complaints over a three-year period, 150 of them closed in the most recent 12 months, with service and billing disputes the most common categories. Patients have reported miscoded insurance claims that led to denials, charges for the full estimated cost before insurance processed a claim, and retroactive billing that contradicted earlier cost confirmations. A recurring theme is limited customer service, with users describing interactions confined to bots or unresponsive chat agents. Of the 336 complaints, 62 were marked “resolved” and 268 were “answered,” meaning Headway responded but the consumer did not confirm the issue was fixed.¹⁴

If You Used Headway

The Google case is the one to watch if you booked therapy through Headway’s website in California; the class definition ties to California users whose data was intercepted through the site’s tracking code during the applicable statute-of-limitations period.²¹⁰¹¹ The labor case is limited to former and current Headway employees in California.¹²

1
Courthouse News Service. Federal Judge Says Class Privacy Claims May Proceed Against Online Mental Health Platform
2
ClassAction.org. Headway Hit With Class Action Over Alleged Disclosure of Patient Info to Google
3
ClassAction.org. M.G. v. Therapymatch Inc., Complaint
4
Top Class Actions. Headway Class Action Claims Platform Shares User Information With Third Parties
5
Courthouse News Service. M.G. v. Therapymatch Inc., Order on Motion to Dismiss
6
Bloomberg Law. Headway User Advances Medical Privacy Claim in Data Sharing Suit
7
PACER Monitor. M.G. v. Therapymatch Inc.
8
ClassAction.org. A.G. v. Therapymatch Inc., Complaint
9
ClassAction.org. Therapy Platform Headway Illegally Shares Private User Data With LinkedIn, Class Action Suit Claims
10
PACER Monitor. A.G. v. TherapyMatch Inc. d/b/a Headway
11
Courthouse News Service. LinkedIn Can’t Dodge Claims It Tracked Users’ Medical Data
12
BAM Law. Headway Faces a Class Action Alleging Overtime Pay Violations
13
Zakay Law. Brower-Walsh v. Therapymatch Inc. d/b/a Headway, Complaint
14
BBB. Headway BBB Complaints