A federal appeals court has overturned a historic federal ruling that found that fluoride poses an “unreasonable risk,” sending the case back to a district court and directing the court to ignore evidence presented after 2020.
On May 21, a federal appeals court overturned a September 2024 federal ruling that concluded that water fluoridation “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.” The appeals court ruled in favor of arguments put forth by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), namely that the district court had “abused its discretion when it refused to rule on the first trial record” in summer 2020.
The new ruling comes nearly a decade after plaintiffs first filed a citizen petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in November 2016. The EPA denied the petition, and the groups sued, leading to a decade-long legal saga between the EPA, parents of children impacted by water fluoridation, the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Food & Water Watch (FWW).
The lawsuit eventually made its way to a San Francisco courtroom in June 2020. At the conclusion of two weeks of testimony, Judge Edward Chen delayed ruling on the lawsuit. By August 2020, he placed the case in abeyance pending a review of the literature on fluoride from the US National Toxicology Program (NTP). The wait for the NTP review took nearly four years.
In September 2024, after reviewing the NTP’s historic report on water fluoridation, Judge Chen ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor and ordered the EPA to take regulatory action and implement a rule to reduce the harm posed by water fluoridation.
That decision has now been overturned by the federal appeals court, and the case has been sent back to Chen. The judge must now rule exclusively on the data presented in the 2020 phase of the convoluted legal process.
In its brief, the appellate court stated:
“The district court’s ‘radical transformation’ of the case by holding the case in abeyance for a year and a half and declining to rule on the first trial record as requested by both parties went ‘well beyond the pale.’ We accordingly vacate and remand to the district court to rule based solely on the first trial record.”
Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs, said, “The court has to forget everything it has learned since then (2020) and has to make a ruling based on whether fluoridation poses a risk to human health based on an outdated, stale factual record.”
Connett also said he was surprised by how quickly the appellate court ruled on the matter.
“The second thing that surprised me is how brief the opinion was. I mean, it was less than seven pages of text,” Connett stated in an exclusive interview with The Last American Vagabond.
“There was very little reasoning and analysis in the opinion. It basically just accepted the EPA’s argument that the district court violated this doctrine called the party presentation principle. It’s a relatively obscure legal doctrine,” Connett said. “But the court found that the district court violated that doctrine by considering additional evidence after the close of the first trial.”
The party presentation principle says that courts must act as “neutral arbiters” of the facts presented by the parties. The appellate court found that Judge Chen went outside the scope of his role as a neutral arbiter by holding the case in abeyance and allowing further evidence to be presented in the second phase of the trial.
Trump Administration Continues Biden-Era Appeal
In the final days of the Biden administration, the EPA appealed Judge Chen’s ruling that the agency should take action on the dangers posed by water fluoridation.
In 2025, under leadership appointed by President Donald Trump, the EPA decided to continue the appeal of the judge’s ruling. In January, DOJ attorneys representing the EPA filed a reply brief as the agency continued to fight the 2024 federal ruling.
In its appeal, the EPA focused on three main arguments: that the plaintiffs lack standing, that the judge improperly considered new evidence, and that the district court went beyond its authority in its management of the case.
“The EPA did not challenge the district court’s judgment on the merits. The EPA did not contest the court’s decision that there was an unreasonable risk. Instead, EPA raised various procedural criticisms of how the district court went about handling the case,” Connett stated.
The Last American Vagabond will continue to report on the latest developments in this ongoing case. Please see our extensive archive of reporting on the fluoride lawsuit since 2020.
