The nine-year battle to remove fluoride from Americans’ water continues as plaintiffs attempt to pressure the Trump administration to comply with a landmark 2024 federal ruling that found water fluoridation poses an unreasonable risk to children’s neurodevelopment.
On November 17, 2025, attorneys representing Food & Water Watch (FWW), Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and individual plaintiffs filed its response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) appeal of U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s September 2024 ruling, which held that fluoridation at the current U.S. level of 0.7 mg/L “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.”
The response comes nine years after the plaintiffs first filed a civilian petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in November 2016. After the EPA denied the petition, the groups sued, triggering a nearly decade-long legal saga between the EPA, and parents of children impacted by water fluoridation, the FAN, and FWW. In September 2024, Judge Chen ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor and ordered the EPA to take regulatory action.
In the final days of the Biden administration the EPA filed their appeal, and now, under leadership appointed by President Donald Trump, the EPA has decided to continue fighting the judge’s ruling.
Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs, responded to the three main arguments made by the EPA in its July appeal: that the plaintiffs lack standing, that the judge improperly considered new evidence, and that the district court went beyond its authority in its management of the case.
The EPA contends that at least one plaintiff’s water contains naturally occurring fluoride and that the plaintiffs therefore cannot prove injury caused by community water fluoridation. The agency also claims that the Judge’s decision to admit studies which were published after the original 2016 TSCA petition violated the act.
Regarding the question of standing, the EPA claimed in its appeal that plaintiff Jessica Trader cannot establish standing because her drinking water in Leawood, Kansas, “naturally contains fluoride at levels 0.4 mg/L, and her water utility adds only as much fluoride as necessary for her tap water to reach a concentration of 0.7 mg/L”. Essentially, the EPA is stating that the naturally occurring fluoride could be to blame for any harm caused to Trader.
Connett argues that the plaintiffs do indeed have proper standing and have demonstrated sufficient injury and connection to the case. “Even if the new “facts” are considered, Jessica Trader’s injury is still traceable/redressable: the district court found (and EPA does not dispute) that fluoridation poses a credible threat of neurodevelopmental harm to her children, and regulatory action would, at a minimum, reduce that threat, including the costs of avoiding it,” Connett wrote in his response.
He further noted that, even without Trader, the remaining plaintiffs also have standing based on credible threats of harm from fluoridation, as supported by findings from the National Research Council (NRC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and National Toxicology Program (NTP).
When it comes to the EPA’s claim that the court improperly considered new evidence in the form of studies published after the original petition, Connett reminded the court that Section 21 of TSCA provides that petitioners “shall be provided an opportunity to have such petition considered by the court in a de novo proceeding”. A de novo proceeding is a legal process where a case is heard “fresh” or from the beginning, without considering the previous court’s decision.
“The district court thus did not abuse its discretion by considering studies published after EPA’s denial of the petition,” Connett writes. He also notes that the EPA itself had argued the NTP’s systematic review—which was subject to numerous unprecedented delays since 2016—was “indisputably central” to the case and that the court ought to “allow the evolving science to play out.”
Despite the EPA’s appeal, Connett reminds the court that the “EPA does not appeal the merits of the district court’s finding that water fluoridation poses an unreasonable risk of neurodevelopmental harm to children.”
On the day he filed the response to the EPA, Connett wrote on Twitter:
“It is not too late for EPA’s Lee Zeldin and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to withdraw their appeal and to comply with the court’s order to protect the public from the health risks posed by fluoridation. Doing so would align EPA with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and help this administration deliver on a key part of the MAHA platform.”
Supporters of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, spearheaded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have been critical of the EPA’s decision to appeal the federal court ruling—especially after Kennedy and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin held a press conference in April announcing the agency’s decision to “expeditiously review” new scientific information on potential health risks of fluoride in drinking water. Kennedy also said he would instruct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop promoting water fluoridation.
Notably, Zeldin and Kennedy did not mention the fluoride lawsuit in their press release or during their press conference.
The Last American Vagabond will continue to follow developments in this legal battle.
