Court overturns landmark fluoride ruling, sides with EPA
A federal appeals court said a judge erred in ruling that adding fluoride to water poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s brain development.
E&E News - May 21, 2026
By Ellie Borst
A federal appeals court said a judge erred in ruling that adding fluoride to water poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s brain development.
A federal appellate court on Thursday vacated a landmark ruling that ordered EPA to address the health risks of fluoride in drinking water, handing the agency a win in a seven-year legal fight with impacts on federal policy and White House politics.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found a district court judge had “commandeered” the case and abused his discretion by postponing judgment and demanding new evidence and a second bench trial. The unsigned memorandum disposition, issued Thursday, sent the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to rule again — this time based only on the first trial’s record.
Thursday’s ruling follows a contentious 2024 decision by Senior Judge Edward Chen in the district court, where he proffered a lengthy analysis that found fluoride in drinking water at the federally recommended level poses “an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.” That determination triggered a federal rulemaking process under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
It represented an unusual instance where the judicial system disagreed with EPA on the science.
“The district court’s ‘takeover’ of the evidentiary presentation” ultimately constituted “an abuse of discretion,” the judges wrote in Thursday’s appeals court ruling. “Here, the district court effectively provided its own factual presentation,” the memo said.
Judges Sidney Thomas and Ronald Gould, both Clinton appointees, sat on the panel for oral arguments in March along with Brian Morris, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana and an Obama appointee, sitting by designation.
The decision, which does not set precedent, did not address the science behind Chen’s finding. It also declined to address legal questions regarding TSCA citizen petitions.
The case now returns to Chen with a narrower evidentiary record — one that does not include studies that have emerged in the years between the two trials or the final National Toxicology Program monograph, which provided much of the evidence supporting Chen’s decision.
“Based on a threadbare analysis, the Ninth Circuit panel concluded that the district court violated the party presentation principle and ordered the court to travel back in time to August 2020 and render its decision based on the record as it existed at that time,” said Michael Connett, a partner at Siri & Glimstad representing the anti-fluoride plaintiffs.
“EPA did not challenge the factual merits of Judge Chen’s unreasonable risk determination, and, as such, the Ninth Circuit does not either,” Connett continued.
Connett said he “will be reviewing our legal options in the coming days, including the potential of filing a petition for cert to the Supreme Court.”
EPA’s press office said in an email it “is reviewing the Ninth Circuit’s decision.”
The ruling lands as EPA and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are already moving in parallel to reassess fluoride’s safety. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin last spring launched a review of the science under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Kennedy has long challenged decades of federal science that fluoride should be added to drinking water systems for their tooth-strengthening properties. Independent researchers say the oral health benefits of fluoride are mainly topical, and there is evidence that points to neurological damages to fetuses and children younger than 6 when ingested, even at recommended levels.
Several communities and at least two states — Utah and Florida — have since voted to end water fluoridation, driven largely by Kennedy and the force of his Make America Healthy Again movement.
SOURCE:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/court-o ... -with-epa/
USA: Court overturns landmark fluoride ruling, sides with EPA
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USA: Ninth Circuit revokes 'commandeering' judge's fluoride ruling
Ninth Circuit revokes 'commandeering' judge's fluoride ruling
The appellate panel agreed with the EPA that a federal judge went beyond his purview by delaying his ruling to await the results of an additional study that both sides had agreed wasn't part of their case.
(CN) — A Ninth Circuit panel on Thursday rebuked a federal court for “commandeering” a lawsuit brought against the Environmental Protection Agency over its purported failure to prohibit potentially risky concentrations of fluoride in drinking water.
In an unsigned opinion, the three-judge panel vacated Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s ruling and sent the case back to him in San Francisco with instructions to rule on the dispute based on the evidence presented at a first bench trial rather than on additional evidence that the judge decided to include on his own accord to conduct a second bench trial.
Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, had agreed with a plaintiff consortium of organizations and individuals concerned that the addition of fluoride to drinking water at a concentration of 0.7 mg/L presents an unreasonable risk to human health. He had ordered the EPA to rely on guidance of the Toxic Substances Control Act to determine the safety of artificially fluoridated drinking water.
“The district court abused its discretion when it refused to rule on the first trial record, despite the parties’ assertions that it should, and when it held the case in abeyance to wait for the completion of an additional study to which the parties had already stipulated not to present at trial,” the panel said.
As such, the panel agreed with the EPA that the judge violated the so-called party presentation principle, which holds that the litigants, rather than the judge, are in charge of framing their dispute and developing the evidentiary record.
Food & Water Watch — joined by other opponents of water fluoridation, like Moms Against Fluoridation and several individuals — sued the EPA in 2017, challenging the agency’s rejection of their petition to consider whether drinking fluoride is dangerous to human health, eventually leading to Chen ordering the EPA initiate rulemaking on the chemical.
“It should be noted that this finding does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health,” Chen said in his 80-page ruling, but, “there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response.”
On appeal, the federal government argued Chen’s decision meant that the case would be decided not merely on evidence presented in the nonprofit’s petition, but on evidence submitted later and scientific studies peer reviewed afterward.
“It renders the petition a meaningless formality," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Robert Stander told the panel at a March 3 hearing. “It undercuts the requirement that the petition set forth the facts that establish a need to regulate and it leads to the nonsensical situation where the plaintiffs present one set of studies to EPA, and then a very different set of studies in the district court.”
The nonprofit argued that if the EPA had their way, experts would not be able to “rely on groundbreaking new studies” even when central to the case, and said the lower court did not raise new legal issues and was using its authority to manage the proceedings.
Michael Connett, an attorney for Food & Water Watch and the other plaintiffs, noted the panel’s opinion didn’t address the factual merits of the lower court’s determination that fluoridation poses an unreasonable risk to human health.
“The panel’s threadbare opinion vacated the district court’s decision based on an expansive and unprecedented application of the party presentation principle,” Connett said in an email. “Based on this expansive application of this doctrine, the panel ordered the court to travel back in time to August 2020 and render its decision based on the (now stale) factual record as it existed at that time.”
The U.S. Justice Department, which represents the EPA in the lawsuit, declined to comment.
The appellate panel included Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Sidney Thomas, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Gould, also a Clinton appointee, and Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, a Barack Obama appointee at the U.S. District Court of Montana who sat on the panel by designation.
SOURCE:
https://www.courthousenews.com/ninth-ci ... de-ruling/
The appellate panel agreed with the EPA that a federal judge went beyond his purview by delaying his ruling to await the results of an additional study that both sides had agreed wasn't part of their case.
(CN) — A Ninth Circuit panel on Thursday rebuked a federal court for “commandeering” a lawsuit brought against the Environmental Protection Agency over its purported failure to prohibit potentially risky concentrations of fluoride in drinking water.
In an unsigned opinion, the three-judge panel vacated Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s ruling and sent the case back to him in San Francisco with instructions to rule on the dispute based on the evidence presented at a first bench trial rather than on additional evidence that the judge decided to include on his own accord to conduct a second bench trial.
Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, had agreed with a plaintiff consortium of organizations and individuals concerned that the addition of fluoride to drinking water at a concentration of 0.7 mg/L presents an unreasonable risk to human health. He had ordered the EPA to rely on guidance of the Toxic Substances Control Act to determine the safety of artificially fluoridated drinking water.
“The district court abused its discretion when it refused to rule on the first trial record, despite the parties’ assertions that it should, and when it held the case in abeyance to wait for the completion of an additional study to which the parties had already stipulated not to present at trial,” the panel said.
As such, the panel agreed with the EPA that the judge violated the so-called party presentation principle, which holds that the litigants, rather than the judge, are in charge of framing their dispute and developing the evidentiary record.
Food & Water Watch — joined by other opponents of water fluoridation, like Moms Against Fluoridation and several individuals — sued the EPA in 2017, challenging the agency’s rejection of their petition to consider whether drinking fluoride is dangerous to human health, eventually leading to Chen ordering the EPA initiate rulemaking on the chemical.
“It should be noted that this finding does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health,” Chen said in his 80-page ruling, but, “there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response.”
On appeal, the federal government argued Chen’s decision meant that the case would be decided not merely on evidence presented in the nonprofit’s petition, but on evidence submitted later and scientific studies peer reviewed afterward.
“It renders the petition a meaningless formality," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Robert Stander told the panel at a March 3 hearing. “It undercuts the requirement that the petition set forth the facts that establish a need to regulate and it leads to the nonsensical situation where the plaintiffs present one set of studies to EPA, and then a very different set of studies in the district court.”
The nonprofit argued that if the EPA had their way, experts would not be able to “rely on groundbreaking new studies” even when central to the case, and said the lower court did not raise new legal issues and was using its authority to manage the proceedings.
Michael Connett, an attorney for Food & Water Watch and the other plaintiffs, noted the panel’s opinion didn’t address the factual merits of the lower court’s determination that fluoridation poses an unreasonable risk to human health.
“The panel’s threadbare opinion vacated the district court’s decision based on an expansive and unprecedented application of the party presentation principle,” Connett said in an email. “Based on this expansive application of this doctrine, the panel ordered the court to travel back in time to August 2020 and render its decision based on the (now stale) factual record as it existed at that time.”
The U.S. Justice Department, which represents the EPA in the lawsuit, declined to comment.
The appellate panel included Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Sidney Thomas, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Gould, also a Clinton appointee, and Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, a Barack Obama appointee at the U.S. District Court of Montana who sat on the panel by designation.
SOURCE:
https://www.courthousenews.com/ninth-ci ... de-ruling/