The U.S. Department of Justice last week filed a lawsuit against California claiming that animal welfare laws enacted by the state have pushed up egg prices across the country by “imposing unnecessary red tape” on their production and are unconstitutional.
The Trump administration’s suit says that California’s regulations governing the treatment of egg-laying hens stopped farmers from using “a number of agricultural production methods which were in widespread use — and which helped keep eggs affordable.”
The Justice Department also claims in the suit that the laws should be set aside because the federal government regulates the egg industry through the federal Egg Products Inspection Act of 1970, which requires eggs and egg products to be “wholesome” and “properly labeled and packaged to protect the health and welfare of consumers.”
“[T]he Supremacy Clause [of the Constitution] does not permit California to inflate egg prices by imposing additional standards that regulate the quality of eggs, and the provisions at issue here are invalid,” according to the suit.
Filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the suit names the state as well as officials including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, both Democrats, as defendants.
The suit targets a trio of California laws that contain provisions laying out how farmers must treat hens that produce eggs. They include two ballot measures, Proposition 2 and Proposition 12, as well as legislation approved in 2010 by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.
Proposition 2, approved by voters in 2008, bans the confinement of egg-laying hens, veal calves and pregnant pigs “in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.” Voters approved Proposition 12, which established minimum space requirements for those animals, in 2018.
The 2010 law, which went into effect in 2015, prohibits the sale of eggs for human consumption produced by hens not raised in compliance with the standards contained in Proposition 2.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins castigated California for causing “real harm to consumers under its cage-free egg commitments,” which she said have hurt consumers by forcing them to pay more for eggs.
“It is one thing if California passes laws that affects its own State, it is another when those laws affect other States in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” Rollins said.
The California attorney general’s office pushed back on the lawsuit in a statement reported by The Associated Press.
“Pointing fingers won’t change the fact that it is the President’s economic policies that have been destructive,” the California Department of Justice said, according to the news service. “We’ll see him in court.”
Newsom’s press office also criticized the suit. “Trump’s back to his favorite hobby: blaming California for literally everything,” the governor’s press office said in a post on X.
Egg prices have declined in recent months after soaring earlier in 2025, although they have recently ticked back up, according to data released by the USDA on Friday.
Prices for eggs declined by nearly 3% in May compared with the previous month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Still, egg prices were up more than 41% during May on a year-over-year basis, the agency said.