USA: Federal lawsuit attacks pro-animal law already approved by voters and upheld by Supreme Court

Humane World.org

in a lawsuit filed last night, the U.S. Department of Justice has tried to resurrect—without warrant and without real facts—a long-ago settled legal fight over California’s cage-free egg laws that have been supported by voters, farmers and advocates for animal welfare and other causes across the board.

This lawsuit seeks to undo the cage-free eggs provisions of California’s Proposition 12, despite many similar losing lawsuits filed over the last decade, and even though Proposition 12 was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States just two years ago in the National Pork Producers Council v. Ross case. We also learned two weeks ago that the Supreme Court refused to consider the Iowa Pork Producer Association’s similar challenge to Proposition 12. Humane World for Animals and our allies defended Proposition 12 alongside the state of California in both of these cases.

California has had laws on its books prohibiting the sale of eggs that come from cruel cage confinement systems since 2010. This attempt to blame 2025 egg prices nationwide on California laws that have been fully embraced and implemented for many years by producers, retailers and government regulators shows this case is about politics and not constitutional law.

In general, federal law regulates packaging, labeling and egg grades—not humane treatment.?No provision of the federal Egg Products Inspection Act invoked by this lawsuit addresses in-state sale of eggs from hens crammed into tiny cages. This case is an overreach of the federal government that appears to willfully misunderstand the text and structure of its own federal egg laws to create the illusion of doing something to help people afford their groceries. There’s no evidence that nationwide cost spikes are caused by preventing sales of eggs from hens in battery cage systems in California. And as we all know, higher prices at the grocery store are hardly limited to eggs.

It’s a frivolous political attack, and one that reflects a disregard for the complexity of the issues involved and a naive fealty to special interests intent on bending our agricultural markets and our public policy to their will.

This lawsuit is just the latest shameless attempt to undo policies that Americans value. Right from the start of the second Trump administration, a faction of the pork industry and its pliant allies in the Congress and the executive branch have been grasping for ways to renew a fight they’ve lost multiple times already—the fight over Proposition 12 and similar animal welfare laws enacted in more than a dozen states. They’re willing to do anything to turn back the clock on the sweeping transformation in public attitudes about the systematic mistreatment of animals in intensive confinement systems. And today, the administration has shown its willingness to go along with the program.