Trump administration blames California for high price of eggs as feds file suit
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Trump administration sues California over state laws regulating egg production.
- Lawsuit claims cage-free requirements inflate prices and violate federal law.
- Experts cite avian flu, not state rules, as primary driver of national egg costs.
The Trump administration is suing California over the price of eggs, saying regulations meant to ensure humane treatment of chickens have contributed to increased costs and conflict with federal law.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles questions nearly two decades of state regulations on the conditions under which egg-laying chickens can be raised, including a 2008 voter initiative that banned them from being kept in such tight quarters that they could not stand up or lie down, and a 2018 measure that said that only cage-free eggs could be sold in the state.
It blames California for contributing to the rise in egg prices over the past three years, even though most experts have said the cause was a massive outbreak of avian flu that led farmers to euthanize millions of chickens. The Supreme Court two years ago rejected a case filed by pork producers aimed at overturning California’s law governing the humane treatment of pigs, which also regulated housing for chickens and other farm animals.
“Americans across the country have suffered the consequences of liberal policies causing massive inflation for everyday items like eggs,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi in a news release about the lawsuit. “We will use the full extent of federal law to ensure that American families are free from oppressive regulatory burdens and restore American prosperity.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a flurry of legal actions filed by the Republican president against Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom as the two spar over hot-button issues. Also on Wednesday, the Trump administration sued the state over its refusal to ban transgender girls from competing in girls’ athletic programs. The state, meanwhile, is suing the administration over its deployment of the National Guard to immigration protests in Los Angeles over the objections of the governor.
The latest lawsuit seeks to overturn provisions of state law that require all eggs sold in the most populous U.S. state to have been raised according the California rules, saying that the state is so large that such regulations effectively limit what producers in other states can do, in violation of federal law and the Constitution.
But while it is true that California’s requirement that all eggs sold in the state be cage-free led prices to rise within the state, the market for eggs is structured in such a way that there would likely be little impact on egg prices in other places, said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at UC Davis.
That’s because California only consumes just a portion of the nation’s eggs, a fraction of the roughly 40% of the overall egg market that consists of cage-free products, he said.
“There’s no strong argument for saying that California’s rules about what eggs get to be eaten here have any particular effect on the rest of the country,” Sumner said.
A far greater driver of the rise in egg prices nationally, he said, was avian flu, which drove up prices because producers were forced to euthanize millions of hens, straining the market.
California’s law requiring eggs sold here to be from hens who live cage-free was just one of several initiatives that have led to an explosion of demand for such products nationwide, said Brian Moscogiuri, vice president of the wholesaler and distributor Eggs Unlimited, which is based in Irvine.
Numerous large companies, including McDonald’s, said they would only purchase cage-free eggs starting this year, and states including Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Nevada passed laws similar to California’s, leading producers across the country to spend millions upgrading their facilities.
While some egg producers still oppose the states’ regulations, preferring to let the market decide who buys what, others may feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them if the cage-free requirements are eliminated, Moscogiuri said. Farmers who invested heavily in new housing for chickens might not be able to recoup their investments if the market is flooded with conventional eggs from hens in cages, which are cheaper to produce, he said.
Newsom, through his press office, made light of the lawsuit.
“Trump’s back to his favorite hobby: blaming California for literally everything,” Newsom’s press team posted on the social media platform X. “Next up: Gavin Newsom caused the fall of Rome and sent the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs!”
This story was originally published July 10, 2025 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Trump administration blames California for high price of eggs as feds file suit."
