THE WHAT? Arizona has filed a lawsuit against L’Oréal and its US subsidiary alleging that the cosmetics group failed to warn consumers about potential cancer risks associated with its hair relaxer products.
THE DETAILS Arizona Attorney General Kristin Mayes filed the lawsuit in state court, making Arizona the first US state to take legal action over alleged cancer risks associated with hair relaxers. The complaint alleges that L’Oréal violated state consumer protection laws by marketing products including Dark and Lovely and Optimum without warning of alleged links to ovarian and uterine cancers. Arizona is seeking penalties and damages and wants L’Oréal prevented from selling the products without cancer-risk warnings. The company is already facing more than 12,000 related lawsuits consolidated in multidistrict litigation in Chicago. L’Oréal USA maintains that its products are safe and says the allegations lack legal and scientific merit, noting that a 2022 National Institutes of Health study cited in the litigation did not establish a causal relationship between hair relaxer use and cancer.
THE WHY? The state action significantly expands the legal and regulatory pressure surrounding hair relaxers, moving the issue beyond individual product-liability claims into state-level consumer protection enforcement and potentially increasing scrutiny of product safety claims, warnings and marketing practices across the category.
Source: Reuters
