Cookware association sues Minnesota over PFAS ban, calling it unconstitutional

A cookware industry group is suing Minnesota in federal court over the state’s sweeping new PFAS ban, arguing the law is unconstitutional and discriminates against out-of-state manufacturers.

“Manufacturers will be forced to either keep their products out of the Minnesota market or treat Minnesota’s regulation as the national standard,” the federal lawsuit says. “A decision permitting state regulation like Minnesota’s would allow each of the 50 states to adopt their own views of what cookware products can be sold in their states, making compliance prohibitive if not impossible for manufacturers.”

The Cookware Sustainability Alliance, a California-based organization, filed the lawsuit this week against Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Commissioner Katrina Kessler. Members of the alliance manufacture pots and pans under brand names like Farberware, Circulon, T-fal, All-Clad and Tramontina.

MPCA said it cannot comment on pending litigation but that it believes the new law is “legally sound.”

“Prevention and source reduction are the best and least expensive ways to protect human health and the environment and prevent damaging impacts caused by PFAS,” the agency said in a statement. “It is estimated Minnesota taxpayers will have to spend $28 billion in the next 20 years to remove PFAS from wastewater and landfill leachate in the state; we simply cannot clean our way out of this problem.”

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of thousands of chemicals that make products nonstick, grease-proof and water-resistant. They also don’t break down naturally, build up in the bodies of people and animals, and some PFAS have been linked to cancers and other health problems. They have long been used to make nonstick cookware, though many manufacturers are now using ceramics and other materials as replacements.

In 2023, Minnesota enacted the country’s strictest ban on PFAS in consumer products, named for Amara Strande, who grew up drinking water contaminated with PFAS and died of a rare cancer at 20. The first phase of the law went into effect Jan. 1. It bans intentionally added PFAS from 11 product categories, including cookware. By 2032, almost all uses of PFAS will be banned, unless they are given an exception.

Avonna Starck, who championed the passage of the law as Minnesota director of the advocacy group Clean Water Action, said manufacturers “should be using their expertise, their time and their money to create products that are safer and less toxic” instead of pursuing a lawsuit.

The cookware manufacturers argue the primary type of PFAS being used as a nonstick coating, PTFE, does not harm human health or the environment and is FDA-approved. Critics point to the production process as a continuing source of pollution, however.

The industry group’s suit also suggests the law favors the state’s only major cookware producer, St. Louis Park-based Nordic Ware, which has changed its production and is complying with the law. Nordic Ware is not named as a defendant in the suit.

David Dalquist, CEO of Nordic Ware, said in an interview that he thinks consumers would still want PFAS-free cookware, regardless of what state law says.

The company has not been using the chemicals since last June, he said, and was recognized by the state of Minnesota recently for its transition efforts.

Still, he acknowledged that the companies behind the suit have “big budgets to go after it, and they will probably cause a ruckus.”

Several states, including Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine, have adopted phase-outs of PFAS in cookware. No other state has as broad a product ban as Minnesota, however. Minnesota is also the first state where a cookware ban has gone into effect.

It will cost the cookware companies millions to either withdraw from Minnesota, transition away from PFAS in their products or make new production capacity just for Minnesota, the industry group argues. The suit does not mention other states soon to ban PFAS in cookware.

The Cookware Sustainability Alliance suit is part of a long-running fight between the rights of states to regulate what’s made and sold in their borders and the federal government’s constitutional mandate to create a common market with free-flowing interstate commerce.

The complaint cites court precedents that point to a “discriminatory effect” in state regulations that violate the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause. The suit wants Minnesota’s law deemed unconstitutional, at least as it affects cookware, or an order barring enforcement against pots and pans with PFAS.

“States generally should not be regulating in ways that are protectionist; that’s one way courts have interpreted the Commerce Clause doctrines,” said Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor Mehmet Konar-Steenberg. “And even laws that don’t act in a protectionist way, they might nevertheless get struck down if they put too much drag on interstate commerce.”

Konar-Steenberg said the suit takes a novel approach compared to other interstate commerce challenges, in that “they seem to be arguing any law that has a disparate impact on out-of-state firms is subject to challenge.”