An Illinois federal judge ruled Tuesday that thousands of lawsuits against major beauty companies that sold chemical hair relaxers that could cause cancer has enough merit to move forward, according to court documents.
Companies including Revlon and L’Oréal, which owns the Chicago-based SoftSheen-Carson brand, had filed a motion to dismiss the claims. But U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland largely rejected their arguments, allowing a majority of the counts — 12 out of 15 — to move forward such as counts of negligence, design defect and failure to warn customers of the risks, court documents show.
The more than 8,000 lawsuits from 19 different districts share similar complaints to the first case filed in October 2022 by Jenny Mitchell and attorney Ben Crump with co-counsel Diandra “Fu” Debrosse Zimmermann, in federal court in Chicago. Crump, known for representing the families of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown and George Floyd, said at the time that Mitchell’s lawsuit was the first filed over links between the products and cancer.
Mitchell said she had used products from ORS Haircare, manufactured by Chicago-based Namaste Laboratories, since she was a young girl and by 28, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and had a hysterectomy.
Her case cited an October 2022 study from the National Institutes of Health that found women who used hair relaxers were twice as likely to develop uterine cancer than women who did not use those products. And another 2021 study, funded by NIH and the National Institute of Minority Health Sciences, found relaxers were “strongly associated with ovarian cancer,” according to court documents.
The lawsuits, which were consolidated in February, also claim brands “intentionally targeted Black and Brown women,” as well as teenagers and children without warning them of the potential effects of the chemical ingredients.
Many of the products are mainstays at stores such as Walmart and Target as well as Amazon. The packaging often features Black women and girls with silky straight hair. Just for Me by Strength of Nature, whose parent company Godrej Consumer Products is a defendant, advertises its children’s relaxer as “soft and gentle for worry-free manageability.”
A L’Oréal spokesperson said the company is “confident in the safety” of their SoftSheen-Carson’s products that are referenced in the complaint and that the accusations have “neither legal nor scientific merit.”
“L’Oréal’s highest priority is the health and wellbeing of all our consumers,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Our products are subject to a rigorous scientific evaluation of their safety by experts who also ensure that we strictly follow all regulations in every market in which we operate.”
The spokesperson also cast doubt on the NIH study and pointed toward other factors that could have contributed to the health outcomes. The study reported heat processes such as flat-ironing could also contribute to health issues because the heat could release or decompose chemicals present in the relaxers “leading to potential higher exposures to hazardous chemicals among the users.”
