As of October 2026 — with the bellwether pool now narrowed to five final cases and the first federal trial officially scheduled for September 7, 2027 — the hair relaxer lawsuit 2026 litigation has entered what many legal observers are calling its highest-stakes phase since consolidation. The litigation has grown to 12,381 pending cases as of October 1, 2026 — now the fourth-largest MDL in the country — while Judge Mary Rowland has taken direct control of the trial-selection process, scrapping the alternating-picks system and selecting the bellwether pool herself, with case-specific Daubert and summary judgment motions now due November 16, 2026 and the first trial set by her September 24, 2026 order for September 7, 2027. Here is everything you need to know about where the litigation stands right now.
MDL 3060 by the Numbers: Scale, Scope, and Why It Matters
MDL 3060 — formally styled In re Hair Relaxer Marketing Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation — is consolidated in the Northern District of Illinois before Judge Mary M. Rowland. There were 12,381 plaintiffs in the federal hair relaxer MDL as of October 1, 2026, in addition to cases pending in state courts. Total filings, including resolved matters, stand at 16,828. According to court records and MDL trackers, roughly 12,381 cases were pending as of October 1, 2026, making it now the fourth-largest active MDL in the nation. That volume represents a staggering concentration of cases alleging that chemical hair relaxers caused uterine cancer, endometrial cancer, and ovarian cancer in women who used them regularly over years or decades.
The litigation traces directly to a landmark 2022 study by the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which analyzed data from the Sister Study. The October 2022 NIH Sister Study followed nearly 34,000 women for about 11 years. Researchers found that women who used hair straightening products more than 4 times per year were 2.55 times more likely to develop uterine cancer. For frequent users, the lifetime risk increased from 1.64% to 4.05% by age 70. Approximately 60% of the study participants who reported using relaxers were Black women, a demographic disproportionately affected by both the products and the cancers at issue.
| MDL 3060 Key Metric | Figure | Source / Date |
|---|---|---|
| Active lawsuits (MDL docket) | 12,381 | Marin & Murphy Law Firm, October 2026 |
| Total filings including resolved | 16,828 | Marin & Murphy Law Firm, October 2026 |
| Federal MDL size rank (active) | 4th largest | Marin & Murphy Law Firm, October 2026 |
| NIH uterine cancer risk increase (frequent users) | 2.55x (lifetime risk: 1.64% → 4.05%) | NIH Sister Study, 2022 |
| Black women in NIH relaxer-user cohort | ~60% | NIH Sister Study, 2022 |
| Bellwether cases (final pool) | 5 (Boatwright, Chattman, Fennell, Ford, Smith) | Marin & Murphy Law Firm, October 22, 2026 |
| Bellwether fact discovery close date | June 10, 2026 | MDL Update / Verus LLC |
| Second-wave defendant discovery deadline | July 15, 2027 | CallFOB, September 1, 2026 CMO |
| Summary judgment / Daubert deadline | November 16, 2026 | MDL Update / Verus LLC |
| First federal bellwether trial date | September 7, 2027 | CallFOB / Judge Rowland order, September 24, 2026 |
| Global settlement reached | None — all 12,381 cases in active pretrial litigation | Marin & Murphy Law Firm, October 2026 |
The Defendants and the Chemicals: Who Is Being Sued and Why
Victoria Chambers is a mass tort and class action research analyst with extensive knowledge of multi-district litigation (MDL), defective product cases, dangerous drug lawsuits, and toxic exposure claims across the United States. Victoria is not an attorney and the information provided is for educational purposes only.