Hannah Truxell
Opponents of the law tried again—and the courts said no (again). The ruling keeps the strongest animal protection law in the world in place.
Proposition 12 has been tested from nearly every angle since voters passed it. What’s emerging is a pattern in how courts are responding—and what that means for the animals it’s meant to protect.
In 2025, Triumph Foods, a major pork producer, filed a federal lawsuit attempting to block Prop 12. The US District Court for the Central District of California dismissed nearly all of the claims, upholding (again) the constitutionality of Prop 12.
Since California voters passed the law in 2018, the meat industry has pushed to weaken or dismantle it through lawsuits, lobbying, and misinformation campaigns. In court, those challenges have been met with repeated rulings that uphold Prop 12 and the protections it provides for millions of animals.
What voters changed for animals
California voters passed Prop 12 with 63% support, making the measure the strongest farm animal protection law in the United States—arguably the world. The initiative bans the use of cruel confinement and the sale of products from animals raised in those conditions.
For animals, that means more space to move, the ability to turn around freely, and relief from some of the most extreme forms of confinement in factory farming.
The measure followed years of advocacy to bring these practices into public view. At The Humane League, we helped lead the effort to secure the initiative's place on the ballot, with volunteers collecting more than 660,000 signatures through a record-breaking texting campaign.
Since then, the law has helped accelerate a broader shift away from inhumane confinement across the United States. It has also been challenged at every level of the federal court system—all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Reopening the case (again)
In 2023, after years of litigation, a separate early legal challenge to Prop 12 reached the US Supreme Court in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross. The meat industry argued that California had overstepped its authority. The US Supreme Court rejected that claim and upheld Prop 12, ruling that states have the authority to pass laws that ban the sale of products on the basis of cruelty.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the decision, “In a functioning democracy, policy choices like these usually belong to the people and their elected representatives.”
Mere hours after the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Prop 12, the animal ag industry and industry-friendly legislators in Congress announced their intent to respond with a bill that would upend this historic win. Since that May 2023 ruling, THL Changemakers have fought to keep the industry-backed EATS Act from moving through Congress. If passed, federal law would overturn state animal welfare laws like Prop 12.
We’ve been part of the work at every stage—alongside advocates, partner organizations, and volunteers. We’ve also helped defend the law in court and mobilize people to push back against efforts to overturn it.
All of it in service of changing conditions for animals and making those changes last.
What this ruling means for animals
At the simplest level, the law is still doing what voters intended it to do—despite years of pushback, those protections stand.
For animals, that translates into everyday conditions that are less restrictive and less cruel. That can look like having space to stand, turn around, and exist without being confined to the smallest enclosures.
This ruling is worth celebrating—and animals are better because of it.
