LA Fitness and the FTC Square Off Over Gym Membership Cancellation

LA Fitness is pressing a California federal judge to dismiss the FTC’s suit over its gym membership cancellation practices. The arguments at a recent hearing suggest that will be a difficult case to make.

The FTC filed suit against Fitness International LLC last August, alleging that the gym’s cancellation policies violate the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act because  the company made it significantly harder to cancel a membership than to sign up for one. According to the FTC, until the company learned it was under federal investigation, members who wanted to cancel had only two options: visit the gym in person during limited weekday hours to deliver a printed form to an operations manager, or mail a physical cancellation notice via certified or registered mail. No online cancellation option existed, despite the gym offering online enrollment. The FTC further alleged that the gym failed to adequately disclose its cancellation requirements at enrollment.

At the hearing, LA Fitness’s counsel made several arguments in response. She contended that the gym does offer a simple online cancellation mechanism on its website and that the online cancellation flow requires fewer clicks than enrollment. As for the certified mail language, she argued that the gym’s policies only recommended that method, and never required it. Consumers, she added, received disclosures about cancellation procedures in their membership agreements and enrollment flows, and none of that information was in fine print. Given what she characterized as the “absolute absence of any real allegations” of harm in the FTC’s complaint, she argued it “really boggles the mind” how the cancellation process could be deemed not simple as a matter of law.

The FTC countered that the two methods LA Fitness offered before the investigation were the only options available for years, and the judge’s tentative order took note of the fact that “notably, for many years,” the gym offered no cancellation option online at all. The contrast between sign-up and cancellation experiences was central to the FTC’s framing of the case, and the court’s tentative order appeared to credit it.

The case sits against a broader backdrop of sustained regulatory attention to negative option and cancellation practices. The FTC’s original Click-to-Cancel rule, finalized in 2024, was vacated by the Eighth Circuit in July 2025 on procedural grounds. Rather than abandon the effort, on March 11, 2026, the FTC issued an ANPRM seeking public comment on whether to amend or replace the agency’s longstanding Negative Option Rule, signaling its intent to revisit the regulatory landscape for subscription services, free trials, and auto-renewal programs. Comments were due April 13, 2026. In the meantime, enforcement under existing authority continues. The ANPRM itself names LA Fitness as one of several recent enforcement cases offered as evidence that unlawful negative option practices remain active in the market.

The bottom line for subscription and membership businesses is this: adequate disclosure of a cumbersome cancellation process does not make it simple, and a cancellation experience that is structurally harder than sign-up is the kind of asymmetry that draws FTC attention regardless of whether a new rule is on the books. The rulemaking process will continue, but the LA Fitness case is a reminder that ROSCA and Section 5 are doing plenty of work in the meantime.