Alabama joins lawsuit challenging California plastic packaging law

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall joined a 17-state lawsuit this week challenging a California law designed to promote recyclable plastic packaging.

State attorneys general filed a complaint Monday seeking injunctive relief against California’s Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, which was signed into law in 2022.

The law requires producers seeking access to California’s market to reduce single-use plastic packaging and food service items by 25 percent and ensure those items are recyclable or compostable by 2032.

“California continues to impose radical policies that have expansive and expensive implications for businesses in Alabama. We will not allow this liberal policy intrusion on our sovereign state,” Marshall said in a written statement Tuesday.

The states challenging the law, led by Nebraska, said the act violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by burdening interstate commerce.

Along with Alabama and Nebraska, attorneys general from Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia joined the lawsuit.

“In essence, the Act conditions access to California markets on revolutionary changes to the way manufacturers, distributors, and companies (large and small) design and package their products, as well as how plastic or plastic-containing packaging waste is disposed,” the complaint reads. “Many of the Act’s unprecedented requirements reflect California’s bespoke environmental preferences—preferences irreconcilably at odds with those of many other States.”

The plaintiff states argue that the act will raise product prices for consumers by passing on the “extremely expensive” costs of transforming product packaging practices.

“The Act conditions access to California’s markets on radical changes to packaging design, production, and waste disposal, forcing businesses across the country to comply with California’s contrived environmental preferences,” Marshall’s office wrote.

The attorneys general also challenged the act’s delegation of regulatory and enforcement powers to the Circular Action Alliance, a nonprofit that Marshall’s office described as “an unaccountable private organization.”

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office’s participation in the lawsuit is the latest example of Marshall joining lawsuits challenging California’s environmental regulations.

Last year, Marshall joined a challenge to California’s Advanced Clean Fleets regulations, which required trucking companies operating in California to begin transitioning their fleets of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles to electric vehicles.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled in favor of challengers in May 2025, prompting the state to repeal much of the act earlier this year.

Marshall also joined a 19-state coalition in 2024 urging the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss lawsuits brought by California and four other states against Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron and the American Petroleum Institute as unconstitutional.

The lawsuits challenged by the coalition remain ongoing.

California faced an additional legal challenge to its implementation of the Plastics Act earlier this month, when environmental nonprofits filed a lawsuit alleging that final regulations adopted by the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery are inconsistent with the act and are “arbitrary, capricious, or without reasonable or rational basis.”