A coalition of attorneys general from 17 states filed a federal lawsuit on June 22 seeking to overturn California’s new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) program. At present, most people in the U.S. have never heard of EPR, but many Americans are going to become familiar with it in the coming years as EPR laws, now on the books in seven states, begin to take effect.
EPR, like cap-and-trade programs and carbon taxes, raises consumer costs by design. While cap-and-trade programs force companies to pay fees based on their level of carbon emissions, EPR laws create a new bureaucracy tasked with assessing variable fees on most products sold in the state, with the fee level based on the type of packaging. Whereas cap-and-trade drives up utility bills and gas prices, EPR raises the cost of most consumer goods, acting as a regressive tax hike that disproportionately harms low- and middle-income households.
Five years ago, Gov. Janet Mills (D) and state legislators in Augusta made Maine the first state to enact an EPR law. Since then, California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington have followed suit.
EPR laws themselves do not establish the fee schedule that will apply to different types of packaging. Instead, EPR laws delegate that task to a private entity, referred to as a producer responsibility organization (PRO), comprised of unelected individuals.
“The PRO, in turn, is responsible for creating recycling or other programs to address and remediate waste from used packaging materials,” the firm Mayer Brown noted in a February 2026 article on the status of state EPR laws, which went on to explain how “both state and private actors play a role in adopting and enforcing EPR regulations”:
“State agencies operate at a high level, setting minimum program elements and statewide lists or performance targets, and enforce noncompliance through penalties and other sanctions. Meanwhile, private PROs like the Circular Action Alliance (CAA), which operates in multiple states, collect fees from producers and gather data on their use of packaging products. PROs then put the fees they collect toward programs designed to recycle packaging after consumers dispose of it.”
Of the seven states with an EPR statute, Oregon is the only one to have implemented its program. However, important deadlines in other EPR states are approaching in the coming weeks and months. In Colorado, businesses required to join the PRO must do so by July 1, while businesses selling products in California are facing a requirement to register with the state-designated PRO by the first day of 2027.
The Los Angeles Times recently reported on the upward pressure that California’s EPR program will apply to the cost of many consumer goods. Jan Dell of Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic organization, spoke to the LA Times about California’s EPR program, saying that she “doesn’t believe the law will work — irrespective of the final regulations.” Dell cited a report by CAA, the state-sanctioned PRO in California, which found that EPR “will increase the cost of disposal between six and 14 times for common products, such as Windex bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate.”
“Californians already have to pay exorbitantly high curbside collection fees for trash, recycling, and organics,” Dell pointed out, adding that “starting in 2027, our groceries will cost a LOT more but we won’t see a reduction in our waste bills.”
Dr. Calvin Lakhan of York University published new research in April that looks at the additional costs associated with EPR’s effort to transition away from plastic packaging for a host of products. The American Consumer Institute points to Dr. Lakhan’s Material Substitution Costing Analysis as proof that “elimination of plastic packaging is an inherently inflationary and inefficient path forward that imposes a permanent, recurring burden on the consumer’s grocery budget.”
“Across the 49-item Master Basket, the mandated transition away from plastic results in a 21.6 percent cumulative price increase ($60.75),” Dr. Lakhan noted. “This raises the total cost of the representative grocery basket from a baseline of $281.29 to $342.04.”
The experience in Oregon, the state farthest along in EPR implementation, previews the additional costs that the program will impose on affected businesses, who are projected to pay at least $100 million annually in EPR fees. Shortly after Oregon’s EPR law took effect last July, the National Association of Wholesalers-Distributors (NAW) filed a lawsuit challenging Oregon’s EPR law. The NAW argues that Oregon’s EPR law allows a non-governmental organization staffed by unelected individuals, CAA, to establish rules and fees “without a real chance to object or appeal or transparency in the process.”
The NAW lawsuit alleges that Oregon’s EPR law unfairly “targets out-of-state producers, disrupts national markets, and tries to control business outside of Oregon—violating the U.S. Constitution’s limits on state regulation of interstate commerce.” The lawsuit also contends that Oregon’s EPR law forces producers to “sign contracts with a single approved private organization (CAA) giving up their economic freedom and due process rights.”
The federal lawsuit that 17 attorneys general filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on June 22 challenges California’s EPR law on the same grounds as the NAW’s lawsuit in Oregon. In fact, the NAW joined the lawsuit filed by the 17-state coalition, which is composed of attorneys general from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
“California does not get to set national policy,” said Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R), adding that “Nebraska is leading this coalition because the constitutional problem here belongs to every state.”
Three weeks before 17 attorneys general filed their lawsuit against California’s EPR law, a coalition of non-profit organizations filed another challenge to the Golden State’s EPR program. While the aforementioned attorneys general are challenging the constitutionality of EPR’s delegation of tax and fee setting power to unelected bureaucrats, the lawsuit filed on June 2 challenges California’s EPR law on the grounds that it does not go far enough. Oceana, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Californians Against Waste Foundation (CAW) filed that June 2 lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court, arguing that California’s EPR law has too many exemptions.
While the legal process plays out in California and Oregon, EPR proponents are working to pass legislation in more states. Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island already have ongoing studies exploring the enactment of EPR. Though EPR bills have thus far only gained traction in blue states, that doesn’t mean EPR advocates are limiting their efforts to Democratic-run legislatures.
In fact, a Republican lawmaker filed an EPR bill in Tennessee last year, and EPR legislation has been filed in other GOP-led states, including North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Missouri. That’s why, though most Americans have yet to hear of EPR, many people are going to become familiar with it in the coming months and years.
