Arizona Sues L’Oréal Over Hair Relaxers: When Does Risk Become a Warning?
On September 10, 2026, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a consumer-fraud lawsuit against L’Oréal USA, its parent company and SoftSheen-Carson. The state alleges that the companies marketed and sold chemical relaxers, including products under the Dark & Lovely, Optimum and Mizani brands, without adequately disclosing research linking use of hair straighteners and relaxers to increased risks of uterine and ovarian cancer.
L’Oréal disputes the allegations. The company says its products undergo rigorous safety evaluations, comply with applicable regulations and are safe when used as directed. It also emphasizes that epidemiological studies have identified associations—not proof that a particular product caused a particular cancer.
That distinction is scientifically important. But it does not resolve the question at the center of Arizona’s case.
The lawsuit asks whether a company must wait for definitive proof of causation before warning consumers about a potentially serious health risk—or whether evidence of a material risk is itself information consumers have a right to know.
What Arizona is alleging
Arizona’s complaint is brought under the state’s Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deception, misrepresentation and the concealment or omission of a material fact in connection with the sale or advertisement of merchandise.
The state alleges that L’Oréal promoted relaxers as beneficial, nourishing and gentle while failing to disclose information that could have influenced a consumer’s decision to purchase or use them. According to the attorney general, some of the products were marketed specifically to Black women and girls, including children.
The complaint reportedly argues that this marketing operated within a much larger history of social pressure and discriminatory beauty standards imposed on people of African descent. That context matters. Chemical straightening has never existed in a cultural vacuum. For generations, Black women and girls have navigated school, workplace and social expectations that treated straight hair as more acceptable, professional or manageable.
The state is seeking civil penalties, damages and consumer relief. It also wants the court to stop future sales of the products at issue unless they carry warnings about the alleged cancer risk.
These are allegations, not findings of liability. L’Oréal will have the opportunity to challenge the state’s factual, scientific and legal claims in court.
What the research actually says
The scientific evidence requires careful language. Current studies show associations between chemical straightener or relaxer use and certain cancers. They do not establish that every relaxer carries the same risk, identify one ingredient as the cause or prove that a product caused an individual person’s cancer.
Still, the findings are significant.
A 2022 National Institutes of Health study followed 33,497 women for nearly 11 years. Researchers found that women who reported using hair-straightening products more than four times during the previous year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer as women who did not use them. Researchers estimated that 1.64 percent of women who never used straighteners would develop uterine cancer by age 70, compared with 4.05 percent of frequent users.
The absolute risk remained relatively low, but the difference was meaningful. Approximately 60 percent of participants who reported straightener use were Black women. The association did not differ statistically by race, yet the researchers explained that the public-health impact could be greater for Black women because they tend to use these products more frequently and begin at younger ages.
A separate prospective study reported that frequent use of straighteners, relaxers or pressing products was associated with increased ovarian-cancer incidence. Research in the Black Women’s Health Study also found that long-term, frequent relaxer use was associated with higher uterine-cancer risk among postmenopausal Black women.
More recently, a 2025 analysis of NIH Sister Study data found possible associations between straightener or relaxer use and thyroid cancer, pancreatic cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The researchers cautioned that several estimates were imprecise, there was little evidence of a dose-response pattern and further research is necessary.
Those limitations matter. So does the pattern of evidence.
The studies do not all answer the same question, and they do not name the exact products or ingredients used by participants. But together they have created a growing signal that deserves continued investigation, transparent communication and precaution, particularly where products are repeatedly applied to the scalp and may cause burns or lesions that increase absorption.
Association is not causation—but uncertainty is not irrelevance
L’Oréal’s defense centers partly on a familiar scientific principle: association does not equal causation.
That is correct. Observational research can be affected by confounding factors, exposure-reporting limitations and differences among product formulations. A relative increase in risk must also be understood alongside absolute risk. Responsible public-health communication should not tell consumers that relaxer use will cause cancer or that every product presents an identical hazard.
But consumer protection law does not necessarily require scientists to prove individual medical causation before a risk becomes material to a purchasing decision.
That is what makes Arizona’s theory consequential. The issue is not only, “Has science conclusively proven that these products cause cancer?” It is also, “Would a reasonable consumer want to know that repeated use has been associated with a substantially higher incidence of serious disease?”
Consumers routinely make decisions in the presence of uncertainty. They compare potential benefits, severity of possible harm, frequency of exposure and the availability of alternatives. They cannot make that decision meaningfully when the company has more information about a risk than the person using the product.
Warning is not the same as declaring causation. A carefully written disclosure can communicate both the concern and the uncertainty.
Why this case is different from the thousands of injury claims
L’Oréal and other manufacturers already face more than 12,000 lawsuits consolidated in federal multidistrict litigation in Chicago. Those cases generally involve women or their families seeking compensation for alleged injuries, medical costs, pain and suffering, or wrongful death.
Arizona’s lawsuit takes a different path.
The state is acting as a public consumer-protection enforcer. Its case focuses on how the products were advertised and what allegedly was not disclosed at the point of sale. Rather than requiring each consumer to prove that a product caused her disease, the state is challenging the marketplace conduct itself.
That shift matters because it moves the conversation from compensation after harm to information before exposure.
If Arizona succeeds, the case could encourage other attorneys general to examine beauty-product marketing, warning practices and ingredient-risk disclosures. It could also signal that compliance with existing cosmetic rules is not always a complete defense to allegations of deceptive advertising or material omission under state law.
A beauty-justice case
This litigation cannot be separated from race, gender and the history of beauty standards.
Black women did not simply “choose” chemical relaxers under equal social conditions. Many began using them as children. Straightened hair was often tied to ideas of neatness, employability, femininity and belonging. Products were sold through images and language designed to speak directly to Black women’s identities, aspirations and concerns.
When a category is disproportionately marketed to and used by a population already experiencing serious health disparities, a potential risk is not merely an individual consumer issue. It becomes a beauty-justice and public-health issue.
Black women experience higher mortality from uterine cancer than other racial groups in the United States. That disparity has multiple causes and should not be reduced to hair-product use. Yet it heightens the importance of investigating modifiable exposures and ensuring that Black women are fully represented in research, risk assessment and regulatory decision-making.
The question is not whether Black women should be blamed for using products promoted to them for generations. The question is whether companies and regulators provided them with enough information to make an informed choice.
The policy gap behind the lawsuit
The United States has historically placed much of the responsibility for cosmetic safety on manufacturers. Even after the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act expanded federal oversight, most cosmetic products and ingredients still do not undergo FDA premarket approval.
That leaves an important gap between an emerging scientific signal and a mandatory federal warning or restriction.
Arizona’s lawsuit illustrates how state consumer-protection laws can operate inside that gap. Attorneys general do not need to write a new cosmetic-safety statute every time evidence raises concern about a product. They can ask whether existing marketing is deceptive, whether a material fact was withheld and whether consumers received the information necessary to evaluate risk.
But litigation is a slow and incomplete substitute for prevention. A stronger system would include:
● Greater ingredient and fragrance disclosure, including chemicals hidden within proprietary mixtures
● Required safety substantiation that accounts for repeated and cumulative use
● Research on products disproportionately used by Black women and other underrepresented populations
● Clear standards for communicating serious emerging risks
● Stronger protections for children and salon professionals
● Post-market surveillance capable of identifying patterns before thousands of injuries are alleged
The Safer Beauty Brief position
Scientific uncertainty should not be used to manufacture consumer certainty.
When evidence is developing, companies should describe it accurately: neither exaggerating a hazard nor presenting safety as settled when meaningful questions remain. Consumers deserve to know what scientists have found, what has not yet been established and what steps are being taken to investigate.
Arizona’s allegations still must be proven. L’Oréal is entitled to defend its products and challenge the evidence. But the case raises a question the entire beauty industry should answer now, not years from now after litigation concludes:
When credible research identifies a serious potential risk, who should carry the burden of uncertainty, the company profiting from the product or the consumer placing it on her body?
For too long, women, especially Black women, have been expected to absorb that uncertainty themselves.
Safer beauty requires more than compliance with the minimum rule currently on the books. It requires transparency, responsible risk communication, inclusive research and a willingness to act before uncertainty becomes another excuse for silence.
What consumers can do now
Consumers do not need to panic, and no single study can determine an individual’s cancer risk. Those who use or previously used chemical relaxers can:
● Review product labels and retain photos or purchase records for products currently in use
● Discuss personal concerns and relevant symptoms with a qualified healthcare professional
● Avoid applying relaxers to an irritated, injured or burned scalp
● Reduce frequency of use or consider alternatives if that aligns with personal needs and preferences
● Report adverse events involving cosmetics to the FDA through MedWatch
● Follow updates from the Arizona Attorney General and the federal multidistrict litigation
Anyone experiencing unusual vaginal bleeding, pelvic pain or other concerning symptoms should seek medical care. This article is for education and policy analysis and is not medical or legal advice.
Sources and further reading
● Arizona Attorney General: Consumer-fraud lawsuit against L’Oréal USA
● Journal of the National Cancer Institute: Straighteners and incident uterine cancer
● PubMed: Hair-product use and ovarian-cancer risk
● PubMed: Straightener and relaxer use and non-reproductive cancers
● Arizona Revised Statutes § 44-1522: Unlawful consumer practices
● Reuters: Arizona’s case and the federal hair-relaxer litigation
The Safer Beauty Brief provides analysis and commentary on beauty, public health, policy and sustainability.
