The latest legal fight between Trump and California cracks open an argument that California’s anti-animal cruelty laws are responsible for spikes in egg prices, even though the price of eggs has stabilized since the bird flu emergency ended.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta have been suing the Trump administration almost nonstop since Trump took office again. And the Trump administration, being the Trump administration, has found reasons to sue us back. Earlier this week there was the lawsuit over our lack of a ban on trans athletes, and now KTVU reports the Trump administration is suing California over our laws protecting chickens and other farm animals, claiming these laws have created "unnecessary red tape" that has supposedly driven up the price of eggs.

As a reminder, voters in California approved a few laws in 2008 and 2018 requiring that chickens must have enough space to actually move around in their cages. Those laws applied not only to eggs from chickens raised in California, but also to eggs from farms outside the state and sold in California. We are a large consumer market, we have economic power, and we flexed it.

Moreover, US Department of Agriculture data shows that the price of eggs has stabilized since the bird flu outbreak of this past winter. Egg prices likely have little to do with California laws, and everything to do with how bad the avian flu got. The CDC recently declared an end to the bird flu emergency, which started in April 2024.

But the Trump administration’s legal argument is that the 1970 federal Egg Products Inspection Act overrides any state laws, and that states cannot pass their own laws regulating eggs. "When you pass mandates and laws that require farmers all across the country to invest millions of dollars refitting and refurbishing their barns, those costs end up being passed to consumers," Jack Hubbard, executive director of the Center for Environmental Welfare (and not a farmer) told KTVU.

Meanwhile, California farmers say that unsanitary and cramped conditions caused the bird flu outbreak, and that laws like those in California will prevent the diseases that cause egg prices to spike.

"When you have crowded conditions, factory farming conditions, that's why you're getting the spread of diseases,” Mill Valley Chickens owner Leslie Citroen said to KTVU. “That's why we're having avian flu. Because it gets crowded and dirty.”

And state AG Rob Bonta says he’s up for the legal fight. "Pointing fingers won't change the fact that it is the President's economic policies that have been destructive. We'll see him in court,” Bonta said in a statement.

Bonta has history on his side. As Reuters points out, these California chicken and egg laws have survived multiple legal challenges. Six agricultural states sued California in 2014 over these laws, and California won at both the federal district court and the US Circuit Court of Appeals levels. Similarly, the Supreme Court upheld California’s humane pig confinement laws in 2023.

Related: Egg Prices Going Through the Roof Because of Bird Flu, Hit $9 a Dozen at Some SF Stores [SFist]

Image: Stack of egg cartons in a market retail display (Getty Images)