Hair Relaxer Lawsuit (2026): MDL 3060 Status, Who Qualifies and How Claims Work

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Hair Relaxer Lawsuit — Free, Confidential Consultation

You were told the risk was scalp burns.

Thousands of women who got relaxers for years are now in a federal lawsuit. Here is where it stands — no settlement, no trial yet — and one question that tells you where you stand.

Active litigation — no settlement. MDL 3060 underway · 12,381 cases pending · filing deadlines vary by state and run from when you knew or should have known.

Did you get relaxers — perms, the white cream — every few weeks, for years?

That one question decides most of it. It seems like nobody ever told you the risk was anything worse than a scalp burn.

See where I standfree · confidential · 2 minutes · an honest answer either way
What the lawsuit is actually about →

No receipts needed · you don’t have to remember every brand · no fee unless there is a recovery. Court costs and litigation expenses are advanced by counsel and repaid from the recovery. You are not responsible for court costs or litigation expenses if there is no recovery, unless a court directs otherwise. The attorney’s fee is a percentage of the gross recovery, calculated before expenses are deducted.

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Marin & Murphy Law Firm

Every inquiry gets a personal review and a straight answer — including “not yet” or “no” — free and without obligation.

Claims are brought against the companies that made and sold chemical relaxers — not against your stylist, your salon, or the person who did your hair growing up. Conversations are confidential. Some matters may be referred to or handled with other law firms. No settlement has been announced and no trial has been held; every case depends on its own facts. This page does not diagnose anything. Attorney Advertising.

As of October 1, 2026: 12,381 actions pending in the MDL, 2 new Northern District of Illinois filings in the sample in the last 30 days. See the hair relaxer lawsuit update and member-case ledger.

Lawsuits consolidated in federal court in Chicago (MDL 3060) allege that long-term use of chemical hair relaxers is associated with uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, and related conditions. As of October 2026 the cases are in pretrial proceedings; no trial has been held and no settlement has been announced. The allegations have not been proven, and each case depends on its own facts.

This page is about a lawsuit — it is legal information, not medical advice, and it does not diagnose anything. Questions about your health belong with your own doctor.

It seems likely you have already opened three or four of these pages and found four different stories. Here is what this one does not do: it does not quote a settlement figure, it does not tell you that you qualify before anyone has looked, and it does not hand you off to a lead broker. Marin & Murphy Law Firm is currently accepting hair relaxer cases nationwide.

Screening starts with one question most women can answer from their own life: whether you used a chemical relaxer — a perm, the white cream, a touch-up every few months — at least four times a year for at least two years. No receipts. No brand list. No records to dig out; those are requested for you with your authorization. It takes about two minutes, it costs nothing, and it ends with an answer either way.

What the hair relaxer lawsuit is about

The filed complaints allege that manufacturers — L’Oréal USA and its SoftSheen-Carson unit, Strength of Nature (Just for Me, Motions, Soft & Beautiful, African Pride), Revlon, Namaste Laboratories (ORS Olive Oil), Dabur, House of Cheatham and others — sold lye and no-lye relaxers containing endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates and parabens, and in some products formaldehyde-releasing ingredients, without warning users of reproductive-health risks. The complaints also allege that the products were marketed to Black women and girls as gentle, and that many of them were first applied in childhood. See also: defendants and products.

For most women who used these products for years, the only risk anyone ever named out loud was a scalp burn. That is what the box warned about, that is what the salon warned about, and until October 2022 there was nothing else in general circulation to know.

The litigation followed an October 2022 National Institutes of Health publication from the Sister Study. In that cohort of 33,947 women followed for about eleven years, women who used straightening products more than four times in the prior year had roughly two-and-a-half times the rate of uterine cancer of women who never used them (hazard ratio 2.55). NIH translated that into absolute terms: an estimated 1.64% risk of uterine cancer by age 70 for never-users, and 4.05% for frequent users. Study findings and adverse-event reports describe associations; they are not verified causation. See also: what the studies found.

Where the litigation stands (August 2026)

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized the cases on February 6, 2023 before Judge Mary M. Rowland. Since then the court has adopted master and short-form complaints, ruled on the manufacturers’ motions to dismiss (allowing the core negligence, design-defect and failure-to-warn theories to proceed while trimming some claims), appointed a special master for discovery and a mediator, and built a bellwether program. On April 2, 2026 the court itself selected ten bellwether trial cases. Case-specific expert discovery closes November 16, 2026; summary-judgment and expert-admissibility motions on those cases are due December 16, 2026, with briefing running into February 2027. A separate, litigation-wide motion by the defendants to exclude the plaintiffs’ general-causation experts has been fully briefed since June 2026 and has not been decided. On July 24, 2026 the court lifted a discovery stay that had protected a second group of defendants since December 2025, writing that “it is time to litigate.” No trial date has been set. The MDL 3060 tracker follows each of these events as they happen.

Hair relaxer cases are also proceeding in state courts, including consolidated proceedings in Illinois and Georgia .

Who is being screened

Firms in this litigation, including ours, screen on a small number of facts:

This page is legal information, not medical advice, and it does not diagnose anything. Questions about your health belong with your own doctor. do I qualify

If you want to talk it through with a hair relaxer lawyer, that page explains what an attorney actually does with a claim like yours; how to join the hair relaxer lawsuit walks through the steps from a free review to a filed case, and payout per person explains how compensation would be structured if the litigation resolves.

Which conditions are in the lawsuit

The federal court’s November 2024 order made uterine, ovarian and endometrial cancer the injuries with a re-filing window and the injuries the bellwether trials are built on. The order also made clear that the litigation “is clearly not limited to the three identified cancers”: women asserting only fibroids or endometriosis may still bring standalone claims, and breast cancer sits inside the scope of the cases the panel transferred. Each condition has its own page: uterine cancer · endometrial cancer · ovarian cancer · uterine fibroids · endometriosis · breast cancer.

What a claim actually involves

A hair relaxer claim is an individual lawsuit, not a class action. It is brought against the companies that made and sold the product — not against the salon, not against the stylist, not against whoever in your family first sat you down and applied it, and not against you for having used it. After screening, the firm gathers proof of use (receipts are rare; salon records, photographs, product recollection and affidavits are what most cases rely on) and the medical records that document the diagnosis and treatment. Cases filed in the MDL use a short-form complaint and a plaintiff fact sheet. Most claimants never appear in court; the bellwether cases are chosen by the court to test the evidence, and their outcomes inform how every other case is valued and resolved. Some matters may be referred to or handled with other law firms.

What about settlement amounts?

No hair relaxer settlement has been announced and no one has been paid. Any page that quotes a dollar figure is estimating. If you have already been shown a range, you have probably been shown two or three that do not agree, because each is extrapolated from a different unrelated litigation. Our settlement amounts page explains what actually determines the value of a product-liability claim — diagnosis, treatment, length of use, documentation — and why published ranges disagree with each other.

What it costs

Consultations are free and confidential, and there is no fee unless there is a recovery. The attorney’s fee is a percentage of the gross recovery, calculated before case expenses are deducted. Case expenses are advanced by the firm and reimbursed to the firm out of the recovery only if there is a recovery. You have no liability for court costs or litigation expenses if there is no recovery, unless a court directs otherwise.

Would it be a mistake to spend two minutes finding out where you actually stand? The review asks about your use and your diagnosis, nothing is filed on your behalf without your say, and you get a straight answer either way — including the answer that there is nothing here for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Cases are handled on a contingent-fee basis: no fee unless there is a recovery. The attorney’s fee is a percentage of the gross recovery, calculated before case expenses are deducted. Case expenses are advanced by the firm and reimbursed to the firm out of the recovery only if there is a recovery. You have no liability for court costs or litigation expenses if there is no recovery, unless a court directs otherwise.