Federal Court Rules CA Prop 65 Dietary Acrylamide Warning Requirement is Unconstitutional
Orders Permanent Injunction
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California has ruled that California’s Proposition 65 (Prop 65) warning requirement for dietary acrylamide imposes an unconstitutional violation on the defendants’ First Amendment right against compelled speech, and permanently enjoined enforcement of “Proposition 65’s warning requirement with respect to dietary acrylamide” against the defendants in the case.
The California Chamber of Commerce (Cal Chamber) initially challenged California’s Prop 65 warning requirement for acrylamide in food in 2019, arguing that it violated its members’ First Amendment rights because it conveyed the message that those foods will cause cancer in humans despite a lack of scientific consensus supporting the conclusion. (For background information on the case, see the Packaginglaw.com article, Preliminary Injunction Upheld on New Prop 65 Acrylamide Lawsuits for Food.)
In an order filed May 2, 2025, Judge Daniel J. Calabretta granted the request by Cal Chamber for declaratory relief and a permanent injunction enjoining enforcement of the Prop 65 warning requirements as to dietary acrylamide. The Court determined that while “the science is clear that dietary acrylamide can cause cancer when administered to mice and rats in large doses, the Parties’ experts strongly disagree that the results of these animal studies can be extrapolated to humans based on epidemiology and mechanistic models.”
The Court also wrote that while “numerous scientific authorities. . .agree that acrylamide is a probable or likely [a] carcinogenic hazard to humans. . .a hazard indicates that at some theoretical level of exposure the chemical is capable of causing cancer, by contrast, a cancer risk is the likelihood that cancer will occur at a real-world level of exposure (because risk depends not only on the cancer potency of the chemical, but also on the dose). The distinction here is a meaningful one,” the court concluded citing the Ninth Circuit’s earlier ruling, as “[a]t its core, the function of Prop 65 is to inform consumers of risks, not hazards.”