One month after toying with the idea of going public, Jessica Alba’s Honest Company has been hit another lawsuit, this time over mislabeled products.




A woman named Margo Smith, according to WWD, filed a lawsuit in Eastern Missouri District Court this week, in pursuit of class action status for her complaint over Honest cleaners. Smith says Alba’s company claims not to use sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in their dish soap, multi-surface cleaner, laundry soap and other products, but that they do anyway.

Neither Alba nor Honest Company has released a comment, but Smith’s suit comes after a Wall Street Journal article published on March 10 declaring that the Honest Company does indeed use SLS, as was found by independent chemists.

“Our findings support that there is a significant amount of sodium lauryl sulfate” in Honest’s detergent, said Barbara Pavan, a chemist at one of the labs, Impact Analytical. Another lab, Chemir, a division of EAG Inc., said its test for SLS found about the same concentration as Tide, which is made by P&G. “It was not a trace amount,” said Matthew Hynes, a chemist at Chemir who conducted the test.


In a statement to People the same day, Alba said The Wall Street Journal was wrong.

“Despite providing The Wall Street Journal with substantial evidence to the contrary, they falsely claimed our laundry detergent contains Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS). To set the record straight, we use Sodium Coco Sulfate (SCS) in our brand’s laundry detergent because it is a gentler alternative that is less irritating and safer to use.”

Elsewhere Alba’s facing another suit in California over misleading advertising regarding the use of SLS and the reported ineffectiveness of their sunscreen.