Published July 23, 2026
On June 5, 2026, U.S. District Judge Mary M. Rowland reappointed 38 plaintiffs' attorneys to leadership positions in the federal hair relaxer litigation, keeping the same core group of lawyers in charge of coordinating discovery, motion practice, and other pretrial work on behalf of thousands of women. The litigation, formally known as MDL 3060, is centralized in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and now ranks among the larger active mass tort dockets in the country.
The cases allege that manufacturers of chemical hair relaxers and straighteners — including popular drugstore brands — failed to adequately warn users that repeated use of the products could expose them to endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to uterine, ovarian, and endometrial cancer. The litigation gained momentum after a 2022 National Institutes of Health study found an association between frequent relaxer use and higher rates of uterine cancer, particularly among Black women, who make up a large share of the plaintiff population given historically higher rates of relaxer use in that community.
Leadership reappointments happen periodically in large MDLs and aren't a substantive ruling on the merits of any case, but they matter practically: keeping the same attorneys in place means the discovery strategy, expert selection, and bellwether case preparation that have been building for months can continue without disruption. It's a sign the court sees the litigation's current structure as working, at a moment when the case is moving into a more intensive phase.
That phase includes finalizing which cases will serve as bellwether trials — early test cases whose outcomes often shape how both sides value the remaining docket. Fact discovery, general causation discovery, and expert challenges are all proceeding on court-ordered deadlines through 2026, with the first bellwether trial not expected before the middle of 2027.
Only cancer diagnoses — uterine, ovarian, and endometrial — are currently included in the federal MDL. If you used chemical hair relaxers regularly over an extended period and were later diagnosed with one of these cancers, it's worth having your timeline reviewed now, since deadlines to file vary by state and don't wait for the MDL's bellwether process to conclude. See Atumio's hair relaxer case page for a free eligibility review, or start your case review directly.