States across the country are intensifying efforts to restrict minors’ access to weight loss and muscle building dietary supplements, with over a dozen state legislatures having introduced such legislation in 2025 and 2026.
What began with New York—the first state to ban the sale of weight loss and muscle building supplements to minors, effective in 2024—has evolved into a broader movement attempting to address public health concerns without the scientific research to support such initiatives.
New Jersey and California are the latest states to demonstrate movement in this area. On September 14, 2026, Assemblywoman Shanique Speight introduced legislation in New Jersey, A 5487, “[to] prohibit sale of certain diet pills and dietary supplements for weight loss or muscle building to persons under 18 years of age under certain circumstances.” A related bill, A 1848, passed New Jersey’s General Assembly in 2024 but did not advance to the Senate.
On September 28, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the signing of AB 2030, which prohibits the sale or delivery of weight loss and muscle building products to persons in the state under 18 years of age.
New York’s legislation in this area, S 5823, was signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2023, making California now the second state to pass these kinds of restrictions. But while designed to protect youth, these measures are facing industry opposition. The Natural Products Association said in a September 29 press release that the enactment of AB 2030 “should be a warning sign for the dietary supplement industry nationwide”—citing “an increasingly unworkable [state] patchwork of conflicting requirements for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.”
We unpack the recent laws and bills below.
Relevant Defined Terms
Both the recent California law and the New Jersey legislation define a number of terms relevant to the dietary supplement industry, including:
Dietary Supplement for Weight Loss and Muscle Building
Generally, those supplements “labeled, marketed, or otherwise represented for the purpose of achieving weight loss or muscle building.” California refers to the 21 U.S.C. § 321(ff) definition of dietary supplements; New Jersey clarifies that these supplements would not include “protein powders, protein drinks, or foods marketed as containing protein unless [they] contain an ingredient other than protein which would, considered alone, constitute a dietary supplement for weight loss or muscle building.”
Over-the-Counter (OTC) Diet Pill
Generally, those pills “labeled, marketed, or otherwise represented for the purpose of achieving weight loss that are lawfully sold, transferred, or furnished over-the-counter,” pursuant to the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. § 301 et seq. California states that these are pills “for which a prescription is not required”; in contrast, New Jersey states that the term includes pills “with or without a prescription.”
California
AB 2030 adds to Part 3, Division 104 of California’s Health and Safety Code as follows:
OTC
Persons “shall not sell, offer to sell, or give away as either a retail or wholesale promotion, an over-the-counter diet pill or dietary supplement for weight loss or muscle building to any person in this state under 18 years of age.” Generally, “a retail establishment shall request valid identification from any person in this state who attempts to purchase over-the-counter diet pills or dietary supplements for weight loss or muscle building if the retail establishment cannot reasonably determine that the person appears to be under 18[.]”
Delivery Sellers, Including Online Retailers
Such parties shall not sell, deliver, or cause to be delivered any over-the-counter diet pills or dietary supplements for weight loss or muscle building to a person in the state under 18 years of age; and shall not accept a delivery sale order from a person without doing either or both of the following:
- obtaining the full name, birth date, and residential address of that person, verified through a commercially available database or databases, consisting primarily of data from government sources, that are regularly used by government and businesses for age and identity verification, to ensure that the purchaser is at least 18 years of age;
- using a method of mailing or shipping that requires an adult who is at least 18 years of age to sign to accept delivery at the delivery address. The signer shall provide proof, in the form of a valid, government-issued identification bearing a photograph of the individual, that the person is at least 18 years of age.
New Jersey
A 5487 would amend Title 2A of the New Jersey Statutes to restrict the following:
OTC
- Persons, firms, corporations, partnerships, associations, limited liability companies, or other entities would be prohibited from selling, offering to sell, or offering for promotional purposes, any OTC diet pill or dietary supplement for weight loss or muscle building to a minor under 18, unless the minor is accompanied by a parent or guardian;
Delivery
- Persons would be prohibited from completing a delivery of any OTC diet pill or dietary supplement for weight loss or muscle building to a residence in the state without first obtaining the signature of a resident who is at least 18. The bill contains an exception to this provision for U.S. Postal Service employees and a defense to this provision if the purchaser, recipient, or signer for delivery falsely represented that they were of legal age;
Labeling
- Delivery sellers would be prohibited from delivering a package containing OTC diet pills or dietary supplements for weight loss or muscle building to a residence in the state without indicating the contents on the outside of the package.
Importantly, these prohibitions would not apply to any OTC diet pill or dietary supplement for weight loss or muscle building that has been prescribed by a licensed health care professional legally authorized to prescribe such pill or supplement.
Additional Points of Comparison
California’s new law, and New Jersey’s recent legislation, largely mirror New York’s successful S 5823: New Jersey’s A 5487 allows minors to purchase if accompanied by a parent or guardian. California and New York laws do not, but they provide more detailed requirements for verification. New Jersey’s bill would impose a civil penalty of not more than $750 for “[a] person who violates the bill’s provisions”; the penalty in New York and California is not more than $500 per violation.
Court Proceedings
Under both California’s AB 2030 and New Jersey’s A 5487, when determining whether an OTC diet pill or dietary supplement is labeled, marketed, or otherwise represented for the purpose of achieving weight loss or muscle building, a court having jurisdiction shall consider factors including:
- whether the product contains:
- an ingredient approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight loss or muscle building;
- a steroid; or
- creatine, green tea extract, raspberry ketone, garcinia cambogia, or green coffee bean extract;
- whether the product’s labeling or marketing bears statements or images indicating that the product will help:
- modify, maintain, or reduce body weight, fat, appetite, overall metabolism, or the process by which nutrients are metabolized; or maintain or increase muscle or strength;
- whether the product or its ingredients are otherwise represented for the purpose of achieving weight loss or building muscle; or
- whether the retailer (or delivery seller, in California) has placed signs, categorized, or tagged the product as such; grouped the supplements with other weight loss or muscle building products in a display, advertisement, website or webpage, or area of the store; or has otherwise represented that the product is for weight loss or muscle building.
Challenge
The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) challenged the New York law but faced hurdles.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied a motion for a preliminary injunction in April 2024, and in May 2024 granted a motion to dismiss on all but a First Amendment claim, which remains in the district court. The Second Circuit affirmed with respect to the preliminary injunction in November 2025 (see EBG blog post here) and denied CRN’s petition for rehearing en banc in December 2025. A petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed in March 2026.
“This case presents this Court with the opportunity to stop the erosion of First Amendment protections for commercial speech and to clarify the government’s burden for justifying content-based infringements,” CRN writes in its cert petition. It asserts that the Second Circuit decision, which applied intermediate scrutiny, “removes critical guardrails…erected in Central Hudson[1] to ensure that restrictions on commercial speech are rare and only permissible if accompanied by a significant government demonstration that they are necessary.”
Takeaways and Implications
As EBG previously commented, the continued passing and upholding of laws to ban the sale of weight loss and muscle building dietary supplements to minors will continue to have the effect of emboldening other states to follow suit. Continued efforts to regulate the sale of these dietary supplements, based not on what the supplements contain, but on labeling, marketing, and representations, are likely to emerge, despite preemption case law, and the recent legislative push for FDA preemption authority over dietary supplement regulation (on which EBG also previously reported).
Such state efforts with regards to the sale of dietary supplements to minors are creating a fragmented patchwork of regulations throughout the nation that dietary supplement companies and retailers will have to comply with, and which preemption principles were designed to prevent. Accordingly, these laws will continue to have substantial economic implications on the dietary supplement industry and the retailer market.
If New York’s law stands, others will undoubtedly follow, and those potentially affected should be prepared to comply. If you have questions, please reach out to the authors.
Epstein Becker Green Staff Attorney Ann W. Parks contributed to the preparation of this post.
Endnotes
[1] Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Pub. Serv. Comm’n of N.Y., 447 U.S. 557 (1980).
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The Health Law Advisor blog is currently edited by Emily Chi Fogler.
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