Court Halts Enforcement of California’s “Truth in Recycling” Law

On July 14, 2026, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California granted a request for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of SB 343, also known as California’s “Truth in Recycling” law. Restrictions on recyclability claims were set to take effect on October 4, 2026, for products or packaging manufactured after that date that do not meet the recyclability criteria set out under the law. The court ordered that “Defendant Rob Bonta, and all those in privity or acting in concert with Defendant Bonta, are hereby enjoined from enforcing SB 343 until further order of the Court.” The state’s enforcement of the law’s restrictions is now indefinitely delayed.

We previously wrote about the significance of SB 343’s claims restrictions here. At a high level, the law prohibits both express and implied recyclability claims on products or packaging unless they meet stringent, state-specified metrics. Claims include text, images, and symbols (including the Mobius loop, which has historically been used to communicate both recyclability and recycled content, and the triangle of arrows around the resin identification code). As we discussed last month, a group of 21 food industry associations (Plaintiffs) asked the court on April 24, 2026, to halt enforcement of SB 343 while the court considers the merits of Plaintiffs’ arguments that the law violates the First Amendment’s right to free speech and the Fourteenth Amendment’s right to due process. A hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction was held on June 3, 2026.

Concluding at the outset that the Plaintiffs met the test for associational standing, the court addressed key constitutional issues in its July 14 ruling, including the following:

Vagueness: The court found that Plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits of their challenge that SB 343 is unconstitutionally vague in violation of the Due Process Clause. To review, Plaintiffs alleged that businesses will be unable to confirm whether several of the SB 343 recyclability criteria are met for a specific product or packaging because businesses cannot know:

• whether a material “routinely becomes feedstock used in the production of new products or packaging;”
• whether a material will be sent to a reclaiming facility “consistent with the requirements of the Basel Convention;”
• whether a material contains elements that “prevent the recyclability of the packaging according to the APR Design® Guide published by the Association of Plastic Recyclers;” and
• whether products and non-plastic packaging are “designed to ensure recyclability” and do not “include any components … that prevent [] recyclability.

Severability: Although the court found that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their vagueness arguments, it agreed with the Defendant that each of the four challenged provisions is severable from the remaining text of SB 343 and signaled that a pared down version may be allowed to stand after the case has been decided. In reaching this conclusion, the court noted that “[t]he structure of SB 343, including the centrality of the 60/60 requirement, and the legislative comments regarding the purpose of the law, provide a ‘compelling reason’ to find that a California legislator would prefer to retain the text of SB 343, excluding the challenged provisions, to maintain its other, independent effects.”

The court also noted that Plaintiffs did not challenge California’s 60/60 requirement, which the court clarified means the following for purposes of the July 14 order: “This provision … requires that materials be collected by recycling programs encompassing 60 percent of the state’s population and be processed by facilities that serve 60 percent of recycling programs statewide.”

First Amendment: Ultimately, the decision to grant the preliminary injunction appears to turn on the Plaintiffs’ First Amendment freedom-of-speech arguments. The court analyzed whether California had adequately met its burden of justifying SB 343’s speech restrictions, and concluded that at this stage of the proceedings, it had not. The court applied the well-known four-prong test in Central Hudson Gas & Elec. v. Pub. Serv. Comm’n of N.Y., 447 U.S. 557 (1980), which asks: [1] does the speech fall under the protection of the First Amendment; [2] does the government have a “substantial” interest that may justify speech regulation; [3] does the regulation directly advance that governmental interest; and [4] is the regulation “not more extensive than is necessary to serve” the government’s interest?

1. With regard to the first prong, the court, applying Ninth Circuit precedent, found that SB 343 seeks to regulate “potentially misleading speech,” not “inherently misleading speech,” and went on to analyze the remaining three factors.  
2. As to the second factor, the court recognized (as Plaintiffs had conceded at the June 3 hearing) that California has two substantial interests: “improving recycling rates” and “reducing consumer confusion.”

3. Regarding the third prong, the court found that California failed to provide sufficient evidence that SB 343 “materially and directly advances” the state’s twin interests.  In relation to the state’s goal of “improving recyclability,” the court rejected Defendant’s unsupported speculation that “heightened recyclability standards will change manufacturers’ behavior by incentivizing them to redesign products and packaging.” The court found that “the record does not provide adequate support to demonstrate that this inference is more reasonable than the alternative: that manufacturers will abandon their recyclability claims for fear of enforcement.” As such, the record does not demonstrate that enforcement of SB 343 would improve recycling rates. Similarly, the court found that California did not put forth sufficient evidence to show that the state’s second goal of reducing consumer confusion would be furthered by SB 343. Specifically, the court observed:

   The current record indicates, conversely, that SB 343’s requirements will result in manufacturers choosing to forgo recyclability claims that would provide consumers with environmental information for fear of enforcement actions. For those products and packaging that omit any recyclability claims, consumers are left with less information than they would receive in the absence of SB 343’s regulatory scheme. Moreover, SB 343 prohibits truthful and genuinely helpful information, such as a listing of which areas accept the product or package for recycling and which do not … Likewise, manufacturers may choose to forgo qualified information about components of a package that would, in fact, be recyclable under SB343’s requirements because the entire package or product would not qualify as recyclable.

4. As to the fourth prong, the court found that SB 343 is not narrowly tailored to the stated government interests but instead “sweeps broadly with the purported goal of reducing the number of potential contaminants in California’s recycling streams but, in doing so, imposes a more significant burden on manufacturers than necessary to provide consumers with the information to make informed choices.” In sum, “SB 343’s broad limitations on disseminating recycling information, including qualified recyclability claims, which would otherwise allow consumers to make informed choices about the circumstances under which products and packages should be recycled, run afoul of First Amendment principles.”

As we have discussed, SB 343 impedes the ability of businesses to make truthful recycling claims about their products, which may also limit their ability to meet the requirements of SB 54, California’s extended producer responsibility (EPR) law for packaging and related materials. SB 54 itself is the subject of legal challenges in both federal and state court. We expect the state to appeal the July 14 order in this case. We will continue to monitor this important case closely and report on any developments.