A federal judge in Oregon is about to decide a case that will shape how — and whether — states can require companies to pay for recycling the packaging they sell, and Texas has a stake in the outcome even though it has no such law. The parties in NAW v. Feldon, the challenge to Oregon’s packaging recycling program, are due to file simultaneous post-trial briefs July 31, and legal analysts following the case expect U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon to rule on the merits by the end of August. It is the first time a federal court has tested the constitutionality of an extended producer responsibility law on a full evidentiary record.
The stakes reach well past Oregon. Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, shifts the cost of collecting and recycling packaging from taxpayers and cities onto the companies that make and sell it, usually through fees set by a producer-run organization. Six other states — California, Minnesota, Maine, Colorado, Maryland and Washington — have enacted similar packaging frameworks, and Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act is the first to actually operate.
The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, which brought the suit, argues the law violates the Due Process Clause by handing fee-setting power to a private group, the Circular Action Alliance, and the Commerce Clause by reaching business conducted outside Oregon, according to trial summaries by the law firm Bergeson & Campbell. The bench trial ran July 13–17 before Judge Simon. In its statement on the trial, the association framed the case as a test of whether one state may set national policy.
Texas is already a party to the broader fight. It is one of 17 states whose attorneys general sued in June over California’s SB 54 packaging law, and a Texas-based food-serviceware manufacturer, Lollicup USA, filed a separate class action in June challenging Oregon’s program, the law firm Arnold & Porter reported. How Judge Simon rules could either embolden or chill EPR bills in the states still weighing them.
Texas has taken a different road, and that is where the ruling matters here. Rather than an EPR mandate, container-refund advocates in Texas have pushed a deposit system — a nickel or dime added at purchase and returned when the empty is brought back by the consumer. That approach, House Bill 2048, which set a 75% container-recovery target by 2035, cleared the House Environmental Regulation Committee on a 6-0 vote on May 2, 2025, then died when the session ended; supporters expect to refile in 2027.
The economic case its backers make rests on attributed figures: Texans bought roughly 23.7 billion beverage containers in 2021, about 80% of which were landfilled or littered, wasting an estimated $372 million a year in recoverable material, according to a Texas A&M Mosbacher Institute analysis cited by the recycling group NAPCOR. Deposit states show what a captured stream looks like — roughly 60% of the PET bottles collected nationwide come from the 10 states with deposit laws, industry recycling groups report.
A deposit-refund law is legally distinct from the EPR model on trial in Oregon: refunds flow to consumers rather than fees to a private organization, so the Commerce Clause and delegation questions in Feldon may not land on it the same way. That legal contrast is part of why deposit backers argue their approach is both the cleaner constitutional bet and the stronger economic one.
For now, the immediate deadline is procedural. The July 31 briefs close the record in Oregon, and the ruling that follows will be the first federal verdict on whether the EPR model can stand — a signal Texas lawmakers weighing recycling policy for 2027 will read closely.