SimpleNursing Lawsuit Over Data Sharing Thrown Out—Judge Says Key Proof Was Missing
- A federal judge in Delaware dismissed a proposed class action against nurse exam prep site SimpleNursing, ruling the plaintiff did not show the company disclosed specific videos she watched to Meta or TikTok.
- The ruling narrows Video Privacy Protection Act exposure for education platforms that run third-party tracking pixels, a booming area of class action litigation.
- The dismissal was granted with prejudice, meaning plaintiff Faith Benson cannot refile the same claim, though similar pixel-tracking lawsuits continue to target healthcare and education companies nationwide.
A federal judge in Delaware has dismissed a proposed class action accusing the popular nurse exam prep platform SimpleNursing of illegally sharing students' video-viewing activity with Meta and TikTok through website tracking pixels.
The April 20, 2026 ruling from U.S. District Judge Gregory B. Williams throws out the suit filed by Faith Benson, who claimed SimpleNursing violated the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by letting third-party pixels capture data about her subscription and device while she used the service to study for the NCLEX.
The dismissal was granted with prejudice, meaning the case is over unless a higher court revives it. For a fast-growing corner of the legal industry that has flooded courts with pixel-tracking class actions against websites, the decision is the latest warning that buying access to a video platform is not the same thing as proving the company leaked what you actually watched.
What the Lawsuit Alleged
Benson sued SimpleNursing in 2024, claiming the site's use of the Meta Pixel and a TikTok pixel transmitted identifiers tied to her, including her phone number and device data, when she purchased a subscription to the company's library of prerecorded nursing exam prep videos, according to a legal analysis of the ruling.
SimpleNursing is a popular NCLEX review platform, marketing a catalog of on-demand lecture videos, practice questions, and study tools to nursing students. The lawsuit argued that students like Benson had no idea their activity was being routed to social media giants, and that the federal VPPA, a 1988 law originally written to protect video rental records, should apply.
Benson sought to represent a nationwide class of SimpleNursing subscribers. The allegations in the complaint are not proven, and SimpleNursing denied wrongdoing.
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Why the Judge Dismissed the Case
Judge Williams agreed that SimpleNursing's prerecorded educational videos can, in principle, fall within the VPPA's scope, rejecting the company's threshold argument that study content is not the kind of material the statute was meant to cover, per the ruling.
But the court said Benson's complaint never connected her personally to any specific video she watched. Williams wrote that "Benson's mere purchase of a subscription is insufficient to identify her specific video-watching behavior."
The opinion leaned on the Third Circuit's analysis in In re Nickelodeon Consumer Privacy Litigation, which holds that VPPA liability requires the disclosure of information tying a particular person to particular video materials, not just proof that a user had access to a service. In the judge's framing, showing someone bought a subscription is closer to showing they signed up for a library card than showing which books they checked out.
Because the theory failed at its core, the court found that letting Benson amend the complaint would not fix the problem, and tossed the case with prejudice.
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