In December 2024, Marielle Williamson, the former student at Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) who sued her former school and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), had her case against the USDA dismissed. She settled her case against LAUSD out of court, which prompted the dismissal, and she has now graduated.
On the 16th of November 2023, LAUSD settled a lawsuit brought by Williamson and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), regarding a violation of free speech when the student was not allowed to criticise the dairy industry.
The lawsuit was filed on the 3rd of May 2023 against the school district and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, after Williamson, at the time a senior at Eagle Rock High School, was told she could not share literature explaining that the dairy industry harms human health, animals, and the environment, unless she provided pro-dairy content as well.
Federal law says that any school participating in USDA’s school lunch program “shall not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk products by the school (or by a person approved by the school) at any time or any place.”
Of the case’s dismissal, Williams, now a college sophomore at Duke Kunshan University in China, said, “This is one small setback on a long positive road to improving student health and increasing choice. It is also a reminder that the longer the conversation on dairy propaganda continues, the more students can pressure the USDA to follow new health research and prioritize student health…While I now attend university, I continue to hear the same story from my high school peers—one of minority youth being made sick from lactose intolerance and dozens of unopened, wasted milk cartons in the trash daily. Students clearly need alternative, healthier options that are not damaging to the environment. While this specific legal route may have been halted, the conversation regarding the monopoly of dairy propaganda in schools has only just begun.”
Deborah Press, Physicians Committee associate general counsel, said, “USDA’s rules throw up roadblocks for students who need to obtain a dairy alternative and even for students who simply want to talk about the harms and inequities of serving so much milk in schools. Why is a food that most students can’t digest a staple of school lunch? The National School Lunch Program needs to change.”
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