17 State Attorneys General Ask Court to Suspend California's Entire EPR Law: What Producers Need to Know

This week, the 17-state attorney general coalition and the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) escalated their federal challenge to California’s Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act (Senate Bill 54) by filing a motion for preliminary injunction in the Eastern District of California. The motion asks the court to block enforcement of the entire Act while the constitutional challenge proceeds. A hearing is set for January 15, 2027 — which will amount to a long wait. Along with its motion, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint adding a new vagueness theory that ties SB 54’s recyclability requirements to the recent preliminary injunction against California’s labeling law, SB 343.

To be clear, nothing has changed yet. The preliminary injunction has been requested, but not granted. SB 54’s provisions remain fully in force. It was only a matter of time before the coalition moved from complaint to seeking an injunction. But the time has come, the clock is now running.

The Big Development: Program-Wide Relief

The scope of the requested relief may be the biggest takeaway. The motion asks the court to restrain Director Zoe Heller (in her official capacity as head of CalRecycle) and Circular Action Alliance (CAA) from “implementing and enforcing” SB 54 at all. The proposed order would direct the defendants to “immediately cease and desist all ongoing actions implementing or enforcing” the Act.

If granted as drafted, the injunction would effectively suspend the entire SB 54 program — fee collection, registration, reporting, source-reduction mandates, program plan implementation — for all covered producers, because the regulators and the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) would be prohibited from administering it. That includes CAA’s first round of invoices, which are expected to issue by early 2027. Notably, the scope of this requested relief materially differs from the injunction granted in the Oregon Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) case in February 2026, where relief was only granted  to the named plaintiffs.  

The SB 343 Connection

Also worth noting is that the coalition amended its complaint to raise new arguments. SB 54 requires that by 2032, all covered material must be “recyclable,” incorporating the recyclability criteria from Public Resources Code § 42355.51 — four requirements of which were preliminarily enjoined by a different federal court under SB 343 on July 14, 2026. That court ruled the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that the requirements are unconstitutionally vague and that SB 343 facially violates the First Amendment.

The coalition’s new argument asserts that because the recyclability criteria on which SB 54 depends have been enjoined, the rest of the EPR statute is rendered unconstitutionally vague. Separately, the amended complaint independently challenges the Act’s definition of “covered material” — specifically, the phrase “routinely recycled, disposed of, or discarded” — as failing to provide fair notice to producers about whether the Act applies to their products. Producers therefore cannot determine what compliance requires when the underlying standards have been pulled out from under them. If the court agrees, the implications reach beyond the 2032 recyclability deadline into near-term fee calculations and eco-modulation criteria.

What’s Next?

The coalition’s motion requests a hearing for January 15, 2027, before Judge Dena Coggins. The underlying amended complaint raises twelve counts, but the motion groups them into six overarching constitutional theories — vagueness; extraterritorial reach; dormant Commerce Clause claims (including discrimination, substantial burdens on interstate commerce, and unfairly apportioned taxes), First Amendment violations of speech restrictions, compelled speech, and association; Import-Export Clause violations; and unconstitutional private delegation to CAA. The coalition argues only one claim needs to succeed to obtain its desired relief. Between now and then, expect opposition briefing from CalRecycle and CAA, and potentially an expedited schedule if either side pushes for one.

Here is why this matters. California is not Maine or Oregon. As the world’s fourth-largest economy, a California-scale EPR mandate cannot be ring-fenced. It resets packaging, sourcing, and distribution decisions for every supply chain that touches California commerce. If the court suspends the program, producers will need to decide whether to keep investing in compliance infrastructure or pull back. If the court denies the motion, those same producers face accelerating deadlines with fee invoices arriving in early 2027 and no other off-ramp in sight. Either outcome demands a strategy. Producers navigating these fluid compliance decisions may benefit from discussions with legal counsel.