Weber

The plastics industry is not happy with California. And it’s looking to friends in Congress to put the Golden State in its place.

California has not figured out how to reduce single-use plastic. But its efforts to do so have created a headache for the fossil fuel industry and plastic manufacturers. The two businesses are linked since most plastic is derived from oil or natural gas.

In December, a Republican congressman from Texas introduced a bill designed to preempt states — in particular, California — from imposing their own truth-in-labeling or recycling laws. The bill, called the Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act, calls for a national standard for environmental claims on packaging that companies would voluntarily adhere to.

“California’s policies have slowed American commerce long enough,” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) said in a post on the social media platform X announcing the bill. “Not anymore.”

The legislation was written for American consumers, Weber said in a press release. Its purpose is to reduce a patchwork of state recycling and composting laws that only confuse people, he said, and make it hard for them to know which products are recyclable, compostable or destined for the landfill.

But it’s clear that California’s laws — such as Senate Bill 343, which requires that packaging meet certain recycling milestones in order to carry the chasing arrows recycling label — are the ones he and the industry have in mind.

“Packaging and labeling standards in the United States are increasingly influenced by state-level regulations, particularly those adopted in California,” Weber said in a statement. “Because of the size of California’s market, standards set by the state can have national implications for manufacturers, supply chains and consumers, even when companies operate primarily outside of California.”

It’s a departure from Weber’s usual stance on states’ rights, which he has supported in the past on topics such as marriage laws, abortion, border security and voting.

“We need to remember that the 13 Colonies and the 13 states created the federal government,” he said on Fox News in 2024, in an interview about the border. “The federal government did not create the states. … All rights go to the people in the state, the states and the people respectively.”

During the 2023-2024 campaign cycle, the oil and gas industry was Weber’s largest contributor, with more than $130,000 from companies such as Philips 66, the American Chemistry Council, Koch Inc. and Valero, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Weber did not respond to a request for comment. The bill has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Plastic and packaging companies and trade organizations such as Ameripen, Keurig, Dr Pepper, the Biodegradable Plastics Industry and the Plastics Industry Assn. have come out in support of the bill.

Other companies and trade groups that manufacture plastics that are banned in California — such as Dart, which produces polystyrene, and plastic bag manufacturers such as Amcor — support the bill. So do some who could potentially lose their recycling label because they’re not meeting California’s requirements. They include the Carton Council, which represents companies that make milk and other beverage containers.

“Plastic packaging is essential to modern life … yet companies and consumers are currently navigating a complex landscape of rules around recyclable, compostable, and reusable packaging claims,” Matt Seaholm, chief executive of the Plastics Industry Assn., said in a statement. The bill “would establish a clear national framework under the FTC, reducing uncertainty and supporting businesses operating across state lines.”

The law, if enacted, would require the Federal Trade Commission to work with third-party certifiers to determine the recyclability, compostability or reusability of a product or packaging material, and make the designation consistent across the country.

The law applies to all kinds of packaging, not just plastic.

Lauren Zuber, a spokeswoman for Ameripen — a packaging trade association — said in an email that the law doesn’t necessarily target California, but the Golden State has “created problematic labeling requirements” that “threaten to curtail recycling instead of encouraging it by confusing consumers.”

Ameripen helped draft the legislation.

Advocates focused on reducing waste say the bill is a free pass for the plastic industry to continue pushing plastic into the marketplace without considering where it ends up. They say the bill would gut consumer trust and make it harder for people to know whether the products they are dealing with are truly recyclable, compostable or reusable.

“California’s truth-in-advertising laws exist for a simple reason: People should be able to trust what companies tell them,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste. “It’s not surprising that manufacturers of unrecyclable plastic want to weaken those rules, but it’s pretty astonishing that some members of Congress think their constituents want to be misled.”

If the bill were adopted, it would “punish the companies that have done the right thing by investing in real solutions.”

“At the end of the day, a product isn’t recyclable if it doesn’t get recycled, and it isn’t compostable if it doesn’t get composted. Deception is never in the public interest,” he said.

On Friday, California’s Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced settlements totaling $3.35 million with three major plastic bag producers for violating state law regarding deceptive marketing of non-recyclable bags. The settlement follows a similar one in October with five other plastic bag manufacturers.

Plastic debris and waste is a growing problem in California and across the world. Plastic bags clog streams and injure and kill marine mammals and wildlife. Plastic breaks down into microplastics, which have been found in just about every human tissue sampled, including from the brain, testicles and heart. They’ve also been discovered in air, sludge, dirt, dust and drinking water.

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit demanding California turn over its voter rolls, calling the request “unprecedented and illegal” and accusing the federal government of trying to “abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots.”

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee based in Santa Ana, questioned the Justice Department’s motivations and called its lawsuit demanding voter data from California Secretary of State Shirley Weber not just an overreach into state-run elections, but a threat to American democracy.

“The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose,” Carter wrote. “This risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.”

Carter wrote that the “taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece by piece until there is nothing left,” and that the Justice Department’s lawsuit was “one of these cuts that imperils all Americans.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.

In a video she posted to the social media platform X earlier Thursday, Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon — who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — said she was proud of her office’s efforts to “clean up the voter rolls nationally,” including by suing states for their data.

“We are going to touch every single state and finish this project,” she said.

Weber, who is California’s top elections official, said in a written statement that she is “entrusted with ensuring that California’s state election laws are enforced — including state laws that protect the privacy of California’s data.”

“I will continue to uphold my promise to Californians to protect our democracy, and I will continue to challenge this administration’s disregard for the rule of law and our right to vote,” Weber said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called the decision another example of “Trump and his administration losing to California” — one day after another court upheld California’s congressional redistricting plan under Proposition 50, which the Trump administration also challenged in court after state voters passed it overwhelmingly in November.

The Justice Department sued Weber in September after she refused to hand over detailed voter information for some 23 million Californians, alleging that she was unlawfully preventing federal authorities from ensuring state compliance with federal voting regulations and safeguarding federal elections against fraud.

It separately sued Weber’s counterparts in various other states who also declined the department’s requests for their states’ voter rolls.

The lawsuit followed an executive order by President Trump in March that purported to require voters to provide proof of citizenship and ordered states to disregard mail ballots not received by election day. It also followed years of allegations by Trump, made without evidence, that voting in California has been hampered by widespread fraud and voting by noncitizens — part of his broader and equally unsupported claim that the 2020 presidental election was stolen from him.

In announcing the lawsuit, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in September that “clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” and that the Justice Department was going to ensure that they exist nationwide.

Weber denounced the lawsuit at the time as a “fishing expedition and pretext for partisan policy objectives,” and as “an unprecedented intrusion unsupported by law or any previous practice or policy of the U.S. Department of Justice.”

The Justice Department demanded a “current electronic copy of California’s computerized statewide voter registration list”; lists of “all duplicate registration records in Imperial, Los Angeles, Napa, Nevada, San Bernardino, Siskiyou, and Stanislaus counties”; a “list of all duplicate registrants who were removed from the statewide voter registration list”; and the dates of their removals.

It also demanded a list of all registrations that had been canceled due to voter deaths; an explanation for a recent decline in the recorded number of “inactive” voters in California; and a list of “all registrations, including date of birth, driver’s license number, and last four digits of Social Security Number, that were canceled due to non-citizenship of the registrant.”

Carter, in his ruling Thursday, took particular issue with the Justice Department’s reliance on federal civil rights laws to make its case.

“The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data. This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation,” Carter wrote.

Carter wrote that the legislation in question — including Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 — was passed to defend Black Americans’ voting rights in the face of “persistent voter suppression” and to “combat the effects of discriminatory and unfair registration laws that cheapened the right to vote.”

Carter found that the Justice Department provided “no explanation for why unredacted voter files for millions of Californians, an unprecedented request, was necessary” for the Justice Department to investigate the alleged problems it claims, and that the executive branch simply has no power to demand such data all at once without explanation.