It’s starting to feel like a new Sony lawsuit is dropping every other week. The latest is a class action complaint filed against PlayStation 5 maker Sony in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. It accuses the company of “retention of a substantial windfall generated by unlawful tariffs imposed by the federal government under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.”
According to the plaintiffs in the Walker et al v. Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC case, Sony is set to obtain “a double recovery windfall” as a result of the Trump administration’s IEEPA tariff refunds, which they believe should be passed onto consumers since the price of PlayStation consoles was increased in the same period to counter said tariffs. If you’re wondering why this sounds familiar, two plaintiffs filed a class action suit against Nintendo for similar reasons last month.
Sony announced that the price of PlayStation consoles would be drastically increasing in the United States on August 20, 2025, and then again for a second time on May 27, 2026. On April 20, 2026, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Trump administration’s IEEPA tariffs were unlawful, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) created a tariff refund website to facilitate refunds for said tariffs to affected importers.
To put it in simpler terms, the plaintiffs are arguing that as Sony passed the cost of the IEEPA tariffs onto consumers by increasing the prices of its consoles, and is now set to receive refunds for said tariffs, it will essentially be double-dipping, getting the extra money from selling consoles at higher prices and now getting big refunds from the federal government.
The lawsuit argues that instead, the refunds should be passed on to the consumers. For context, the suit specifically states that, between August 21, 2025, and April 2, 2026, the PlayStation 5 “disc edition” saw a $150 total increase, the PlayStation “digital edition” increased by $150, and the PlayStation 5 Pro increased by $200.
The case is a “Nationwide Class” suit, which means that, should the plaintiffs win, “all individuals” who purchased a PlayStation console during the class period (August 1, 2025, to the present) are included. The case was filed on May 6, 2026, so it’s too early to say exactly what kind of sum would be passed on to consumers if the plaintiffs win.
