A vegan California student who wanted to promote plant-based milk at her high school felt that federal nutrition guidelines were undercutting her ability to speak freely. So in May 2023, she sued the school district and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, arguing that her First Amendment rights were violated.
While the school settled about a year ago, the USDA keep defending its dairy data and initiatives. Over the weekend, U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin in Los Angeles put an end to that lawsuit, saying that the student, Marielle Williamson, lacked standing to sue because she has already graduated.
The USDA has won.
“Mere allegations of a subjective chill are not an adequate substitute for a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm,” the judge wrote.
Now a sophomore at Duke University studying in China, Williamson’s case began during her senior year at Eagle Rock. After hosting an event in 2022 to raise awareness about non-dairy milk alternatives, she sought to repeat it the following spring. Her plans, which included offering plant-based beverages and information about their benefits, were halted when school administrators told her she would also have to distribute materials promoting dairy milk.
Citing federal rules meant to entrench cow’s milk as part of the National School Lunch Program, they refused to approve her event without the added dairy component.
Unwilling to compromise the message of her campaign, Williamson opted not to proceed and, with the support of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a plant-based advocacy organization, filed her 2023 lawsuit. The suit targeted both the Los Angeles Unified School District and the USDA, challenging the requirement for schools to serve dairy milk and labeling it unconstitutional.
The court’s ultimate dismissal of the case against the USDA was in part because the judge said that the federal agency had not directly threatened her speech. The judge also deemed her claims moot because she had since graduated.
The variety of alternative products available in the marketplace has greatly expanded from soy, rice, and almond to include cashew, coconut, flaxseed, hazelnut, hemp seed, macadamia, oat, pea, peanut, pecan, quinoa, and walnut-based beverages. Although these products are made from liquid-based extracts of plant materials, such as tree nuts, legumes, seeds, or grains, they are frequently labeled with names that include the term “milk.”
Federal Dietary Guidelines only include fortified soy beverages in the dairy group because their nutrient composition is similar to that of milk. Current dietary guidance primarily relies on dairy milk as a source of key nutrients of public health concern, including calcium and vitamin D..
Williamson’s efforts appear to have resonated far beyond her school. Her advocacy is part of a growing youth-led movement challenging federal dairy mandates. Critics argue that these rules are outdated, citing health disparities linked to lactose intolerance and the environmental impact of so-called “industrial” dairy farming. According to the latest reports, 97 percent of U.S. dairy farms are family owned and operated.
Although pPlant-based beverages have become increasingly nutritious in recent years, particularly with better measures of protein and calcium, recent science in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that milk alternatives were still generally lower in protein and saturated fatty acids than dairy milk, with high variability in added sugars content. In fact, the data discovered a high nutritional variability between alternative milk product categories, as well as within the categories themselves (meaning not all oat milks deliver the same nutritional values).
