EL7.AI
StocksMediumUpdated•Originally published 11 September 2026•Updated 11 September 2026•
2 min read

Arizona Sues L'Oréal USA Over Alleged Failure to Disclose Hair-Relaxer Cancer Risks

Key Facts

1Arizona filed a consumer-fraud lawsuit on September 11, 2026, against L'Oréal USA, its parent company and SoftSheen over safety disclosures for hair relaxers.
2MDL 3060 had 12,129 pending actions on September 1, 2026, covering multiple companies and products.
3A 2022 study associated use of straightening products more than 4 times a year with a 2.55 hazard ratio for uterine cancer, without establishing causation by a specific product.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said on September 11, 2026, that her office filed a consumer-fraud lawsuit against L'Oréal USA, its parent company and SoftSheen over the advertising and sale of chemical hair relaxers without disclosing, as the state alleges, that they contained likely carcinogens or had been linked to increased risks of uterine and ovarian cancer.

The state said the products were marketed primarily to African American women and that some were marketed to children. These are allegations in a civil lawsuit, not judicial findings; filing the case does not establish corporate liability or product-specific causation.

In its latest annual disclosure available before the Arizona lawsuit, L'Oréal said that as of December 31, 2025, its U.S. companies faced about 10,670 federal proceedings consolidated in multidistrict litigation and about 1,140 individual state-court actions. The group said it strongly contests the claims in those cases.

A U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation report shows that 12,129 actions remained pending in MDL 3060 on September 1, 2026. The proceeding covers multiple companies and products, so that figure is not a count of judgments or proven claims against L'Oréal alone.

Part of the scientific debate stems from a 2022 study of 33,947 women aged 35 to 74, followed for an average of 10.9 years, during which 378 uterine-cancer cases were identified. Use of straightening products more than 4 times in the previous year was associated with a higher incidence than non-use, with a hazard ratio of 2.55 and a 95% confidence interval of 1.46 to 4.45.

The Arizona case adds a government-enforcement track to the existing litigation, but the available official sources provide no estimate of a potential loss or settlement tied to the new action. The financial assessment will depend on the defendants' response, the case's progress and any later L'Oréal disclosures; the study's epidemiological association also does not by itself prove that a particular product caused cancer.