In May 2026 a US Appeals court ruled that the decision made by Judge Chen in September 2024, “that fluoridation posed an unreasonable risk to health” and that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needed to take steps to remove risk, was to be vacated. This means the decision is no longer recognized and Chen is now required to make a new determination based solely on the evidence and testimony that was available to him in 2020.
The reason given by the Appeals court was that they deemed Judge Chen made an error when he paused the trial in 2020 to wait for the release of the latest US Government research, the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) systematic review. The Appeals Court rule was based on a single obscure narrow legal procedural issue that has nothing to do with the scientific findings in Judge Chen’s ruling. The EPA never tried to challenge the scientific findings in their Appeal.
As there was substantial evidence pointing to fluoride’s harm even in 2020, this could quite easily result in Judge Chen coming the same conclusion he came to in 2024.
However, Fluoride Action Network is considering taking the Appeals Court decision to a larger Appeals Court (11 judges instead of 3) or the Supreme Court.
A final draft of the NTP review was released in March 2023, and the trial re-commenced in February 2024. Each phase of the trial lasted two weeks. The final version of the NTP review was published in August 2024 and Judge Chen made his decision in September 2024. The EPA appealed that decision in February 2026 resulting in the ruling from the Appeals court.
