The 2026 US Influencer-Disclosure Class Actions: What Gymshark, Alo Yoga and Revolve Mean for Brand Liability

Short answer: three lawsuits, one new legal mechanism — and it isn't the FTC suing

Since April 2025, US consumers have filed three separate class-action lawsuits against major DTC fashion brands — Alo Yoga, Revolve Group and, most recently, Gymshark — all built on the same core claim: the brand paid influencers to recommend products without clearly disclosing the relationship, and consumers paid in good faith for what they believed was an authentic, unpaid recommendation. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did not bring any of these cases. Private consumers and their attorneys are suing under state consumer-protection statutes — a mechanism that's structurally different from both the FTC's own enforcement and Denmark's Forbrugerombudsmanden model, as this article explains.

This article reports what consumers themselves allege in their complaints, and what courts have actually ruled so far — not what has been proven. None of the three brands has been found liable for violating disclosure rules.

The three cases, compared

All three were filed as proposed class actions — meaning no court has yet certified that the case may actually proceed on behalf of an entire class of purchasers. That's a separate procedural step, distinct from the underlying disclosure allegation itself.

How do you sue over something the FTC itself can't be sued for?

The legal mechanism behind all three cases: the FTC Act does not give private consumers their own right to sue (there's no "private right of action"). Only the FTC itself can enforce the statute directly. Plaintiffs' attorneys work around that by suing instead under state consumer-protection statutes — often called "little FTC Acts" — which prohibit deceptive or unfair marketing on the same underlying principle, and which do give private consumers a right to sue and seek damages. The FTC's own Endorsement Guides then get used as the reference standard for what "adequate disclosure" means — not as the actual basis for the lawsuit.

• The Alo Yoga complaint invokes state consumer-protection statutes in Illinois and California plus equivalent laws in more than 20 other states, alongside unjust enrichment and negligent misrepresentation claims.
• The Revolve complaint invokes the FTC Act as a reference standard together with equivalent state-law statutes in more than two dozen states.
• The Gymshark complaint relies primarily on New York's own General Business Law § 349 (deceptive business practices) plus unjust enrichment, and additionally alleges that Gymshark encouraged its influencers to violate the platforms' own terms of service by deliberately withholding disclosure.

The shared legal theory behind all three is often called a "price premium" theory: the plaintiff isn't claiming the product was defective or didn't work — only that they paid more, or wouldn't have bought at all, had they known the endorsement was paid rather than authentic.

What actually happened in each case — allegation versus outcome

Alo Yoga: reported settled, never tested on the merits

The complaint from Alina Sulici (Illinois) and Alex Chihaia (Florida), filed 11 April 2025, named Alo Yoga and more than a dozen influencers, alleging consumers bought Alo apparel and Alo Moves platform subscriptions after seeing posts that lacked the required "#ad" or "paid partnership" labels. Per docket-based reporting, defendants were expected to file a draft settlement agreement by 17 September 2025, and influencer defendant Olivia Ponton was dismissed from the case with prejudice on 15 August 2025. The case therefore appears to have been resolved through settlement before any court ruled on whether Alo Yoga actually violated disclosure law — meaning neither side's claims were ever tested.

Revolve: the class action is dead, the case survives as individual arbitration

The most instructive outcome of the three. In the Negreanu case, on 17 September 2025, Judge Michelle Williams Court ordered the plaintiff's claims compelled to individual arbitration and struck all class action allegations from the case. The reasoning: the plaintiff's purchase on Revolve's website constituted acceptance of the site's Terms of Service, which contained a binding arbitration clause — the court rejected arguments that the clause was inconspicuous or unconscionable. In other words, Revolve didn't win on the merits (whether the influencers disclosed or not) — it won on a purely procedural basis that sits entirely outside disclosure law.

Gymshark: the newest case, still pending

Mihaela Lupea's complaint, filed 16 June 2026 in the Southern District of New York, alleges Gymshark paid hundreds of fitness influencers — including named influencers Whitney Simmons and Annabel Lucinda — and instructed them to avoid the required FTC-style disclosure so paid endorsements would appear organic. The complaint goes a step further than the other two by also alleging that Gymshark's creator contracts contained exclusivity clauses that reinforced the alleged scheme. The case is still pending, with no ruling yet on either class certification or the merits.

Why this matters even if your brand isn't Gymshark, Alo Yoga or Revolve

The point many brands miss: this mechanism doesn't require the influencer to be based in the US or have any US presence at all. It's the brand being sued — not (primarily) the influencer. See do FTC disclosure rules apply to a Danish influencer working with a US brand? for the related — but legally entirely separate — question of when the influencer is the one potentially exposed. Here, it's the brand's own exposure at stake, and it applies in principle to any brand marketing and selling to US consumers, regardless of where the brand itself is headquartered. A Danish DTC brand selling through its own US-facing webshop and running paid collaborations with American or international influencers without a documented disclosure requirement in its contracts sits, structurally, in exactly the same position as the three named brands above.

The Revolve outcome's real lesson: arbitration and class-action-waiver clauses

The most practically useful lesson from the three cases doesn't come from disclosure law at all — it comes from how the Revolve case ended. A binding arbitration clause with a class-action waiver in a website's Terms of Service can, in practice, prevent exactly this kind of case from proceeding as a class action at all — regardless of how strong or weak the underlying disclosure allegation is. It's not a guarantee (the clause's enforceability depends on ordinary contract law and can be challenged), but it's a structural protection a brand can build into its own sales terms, entirely independent of how well-written the influencer contracts themselves are.

This mechanism compared to three other enforcement systems

See influencer marketing disclosure rules in Denmark and the EU and the UK's ASA/CAP Code vs Denmark's rules, compared for the other two enforcement models already covered in the Academy.

Decision framework: what should a brand or agency running US-facing campaigns actually do?

IF your brand sells to or markets directly at US consumers, AND you use paid influencers → write a specific, unambiguous disclosure requirement into every contract, and document that the instruction was actually given — see what to put in an influencer contract.

IF your own website sells directly to US consumers → have a lawyer review whether your Terms of Service contain an arbitration clause with a class-action waiver, on the same model as the Revolve case.

IF an influencer deviates from agreed labelling despite a clear instruction → documentation of that instruction is exactly what determines who bears responsibility afterward — see indemnification clauses in influencer contracts for how to write that allocation into the contract in advance.

IF you're unsure of your total exposure on a large, recurring US collaboration → consider a legal review and possibly liability insurance that specifically covers regulatory and disclosure-related claims.

Make Influence's perspective

We haven't been a party to or advised directly on any of the three cases above, and we don't offer legal advice — this is a review of publicly reported litigation, not a legal assessment of your specific situation. What the cases do show clearly: the cheapest insurance against this kind of claim isn't a legal structure built after a suit is filed, but a specific, written disclosure requirement in the contract that's actually followed up on and documented before the campaign goes live. All three cases are, at bottom, about the same thing as Forbrugerombudsmanden's own Danish practice: the label has to be clear, first in the post, and it isn't enough to trust that the influencer will remember on their own.

FAQ

Can a US consumer sue directly under the FTC Act itself?

No. The FTC Act doesn't give private consumers their own right to sue — only the FTC itself can enforce the statute directly. The three cases in this article were therefore brought under state consumer-protection statutes, which do give consumers a right to sue, with the FTC's own rules used as the reference standard for what counts as inadequate disclosure.

Does this mean Revolve, Alo Yoga or Gymshark have been found to have violated disclosure rules?

No. None of the three cases has ended in a court ruling that the brand actually violated disclosure law. Alo Yoga is reported to have settled before the case got that far; Revolve's class allegations were struck on a procedural basis (arbitration), not on the merits; and the Gymshark case is still pending. What's described in this article is allegations in a complaint, not a judgment.

Does this type of lawsuit only affect US brands?

No. The mechanism requires that the brand markets to and sells to US consumers — not that the brand itself is headquartered in the US. A Danish or European brand with a US-facing webshop and US or international influencer collaborations sits, in principle, in the same position.

Can the influencer themselves be sued, or is it only the brand?

Both happen. The Alo Yoga case originally named more than a dozen influencers as co-defendants (one, Olivia Ponton, was later dismissed from the case with prejudice), but the primary financial target in all three cases is the brand, not the individual influencers — the same pattern seen in the FTC's own enforcement history; see do FTC disclosure rules apply to a Danish influencer?

Does an arbitration clause fully protect a brand against this type of suit?

Not automatically and not in every case — the clause's enforceability depends on ordinary US contract law, and a court can still strike it down if it's found inconspicuous or unconscionable. But in the Revolve case, the clause held, and the result was that the entire class action was struck from the case. That makes a review of your own Terms of Service a concrete, actionable item.

Is this the same as Denmark's own group-litigation system?

No. The US "class action" mechanism (Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23) is procedurally and legally distinct from Denmark's own group litigation under retsplejeloven chapter 23a, and this article covers only the US system and US law.