Federal Court Blocks Enforcement of California Truth-in-Recycling Law

A federal district court has issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of California Senate Bill (SB) 343, the state’s “Truth-in-Recycling” law, less than three months before its October 4, 2026 compliance deadline.

In California League of Food Producers et al. v. Bonta, the US District Court for the Southern District of California issued an order finding that the industry association plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that certain provisions of the statute are unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment and that the law’s restrictions on recyclability claims violate the First Amendment’s protections for commercial speech.

The court’s order halts enforcement of SB 343 pending further proceedings and provides a framework for consideration of the parties’ arguments with respect to a final decision on enforceability of this recycling and labeling law.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The court’s order enjoins enforcement of SB 343 pending further proceedings on the merits.
• Those further proceedings ultimately will determine whether SB 343 may be enforced in whole or in part.
• In the interim, parties other than the California Attorney General could seek to pursue claims under SB 343, but such claims likely would face similar constitutional challenges concerning the enforceability of the statute.

BACKGROUND

As discussed in our prior LawFlashes, SB 343 restricts when companies may use the familiar “chasing arrows” symbol or otherwise represent that products or packaging are recyclable. Under the statute, recyclability claims generally are permitted only if products satisfy California’s statewide recyclability criteria, including but not limited to the law’s 60% collection and 60% processing thresholds, commonly referred to as the “60/60 requirement.”

The law places the burden on manufacturers to determine whether their products satisfy the applicable recyclability criteria and maintain records supporting recyclability claims. Following publication of CalRecycle’s Material Characterization Report in April 2025, the statute’s 18-month compliance period established an October 4, 2026 effective date for the labeling restrictions.

In March 2026, a coalition of industry associations challenged SB 343, alleging violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution and seeking both declaratory and injunctive relief. In light of the pending October 4 effective date, the plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the statute pending a trial on the merits.

COURT GRANTS PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

On July 14, the district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. The court held that the plaintiffs had standing and had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, that they would suffer irreparable harm absent relief, and that the balance of equities and the public interest both supported temporarily enjoining enforcement of SB 343.

The court therefore enjoined California Attorney General Rob Bonta and “all those in privity or acting in concert with” him from enforcing the statute pending further order of the court.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT VAGUENESS CLAIMS

Analyzing the plaintiffs’ Fourteenth Amendment vagueness claim, the court concluded that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in demonstrating that four provisions of the statute fail to provide constitutionally adequate notice regarding the products and packaging that qualify as “recyclable.”

Specifically, the court found the following statutory requirements to be impermissibly vague:

• The requirement that products or packaging “are of a material type and form that routinely become feedstock used in the production of new products or packaging”;
• The requirement that products or packaging are “sent to and reclaimed at a facility consistent with the requirements of the Basel Convention”;
• The requirement that plastic products or packaging comply with the Association of Plastic Recyclers’ APR Design Guide; and
• The requirement that products and packaging are designed to “ensure recyclability” and not “prevent” recyclability.

According to the court, these provisions fail to provide sufficiently clear standards for regulated parties, particularly given that compliance may depend on potentially variable downstream recycling practices, evolving industry guidance, and market conditions for recycled content that manufacturers cannot readily determine, predict, or control.

The court emphasized that CalRecycle stated in its Material Characterization Report that it is not authorized to answer many of these questions, leaving businesses to make their own determinations while facing potential civil and criminal liability.

While the court found the requirements in these provisions likely unconstitutional, it also concluded that they are severable from the remainder of the statute under California law.

FIRST AMENDMENT COMMERCIAL SPEECH

The court next turned to the plaintiffs’ claim that the law impermissibly restricts protected commercial speech in violation of the First Amendment.

Applying the US Supreme Court’s commercial speech framework under Central Hudson, the court concluded that SB 343 regulates “potentially misleading” rather than “inherently misleading” speech and that California has a substantial interest in advancing the stated purposes of reducing consumer confusion and improving recycling rates.

However, the court determined that the state failed to demonstrate that SB 343’s restrictions would materially advance those interests and that the statute was not narrowly tailored to advance those interests.

The court pointed to evidence that manufacturers may respond to the statute by removing truthful recyclability claims altogether rather than redesigning products or packaging to satisfy SB 343’s requirements. According to the court, this outcome could leave consumers with less information regarding the recyclability of products and packaging while potentially reducing recycling rather than improving it, thus failing to materially advance the state’s stated interests.

For similar reasons, the court concluded that the state’s interest in preventing consumer confusion could be achieved through less restrictive means than the statute’s broad prohibitions on qualified recycling statements and that the heightened requirements for recyclability claims were more extensive than necessary to advance California’s interest in improving recycling rates. 

For these reasons, the court determined that the plaintiffs had shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their First Amendment challenge both with respect to the statute as enacted and with the severance of unconstitutionally vague provisions.

With respect to the latter, the court reasoned that the severance of the unconstitutionally vague provisions failed to alleviate the concerns about whether SB 343 would materially advance the state’s interests and whether the statute was narrowly tailored to advance those interests.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

The decision functionally suspends California’s planned October 4 implementation of SB 343 while the litigation proceeds. Notably, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. Casa arguably limits the applicability of the injunction to the parties to the litigation, thus “any district attorney” or private actor could seek to enforce the statute’s recyclability criteria and any consumer could seek to recover damages for alleged violations of the statute, as authorized by SB 343, because they are not “in privity with or acting in concert with” the California Attorney General.

However, as a practical matter, those parties likely would be confronted with the same constitutional challenges to the enforceability of the statute, rendering such claims unlikely at this stage. 

Even for the litigants themselves the court’s decision does not resolve the case on the merits. The California AG likely will seek to present evidence that the statute materially advances the state’s interests in avoiding consumer confusion and improves recycling rates and that the provisions of SB 343 are narrowly tailored to achieve those ends.

If the California AG were to convince the court, which seems doubtful based on the preliminary injunction order, the statute could be enforced with the unconstitutionally vague provisions severed. It also is possible, albeit seemingly improbable, that the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit could reverse on appeal.

In the interim, companies should continue to monitor developments, including legislation, regulation, and litigation, related to recycling labels on products and packaging as such labels face increased scrutiny in light of widespread reports concerning low recycling rates for many products labeled “recyclable.”