Trader Joe’s Lawsuit Against Direct Action Everywhere: The Ruling

Trader Joe’s lawsuit against Direct Action Everywhere is a trespass case filed on July 3, 2025, in Alameda County Superior Court, aimed at stopping the animal rights group from staging protests inside the grocer’s California stores over its chicken supplier, Petaluma Poultry. In August 2025, a judge partially denied Trader Joe’s request for a sweeping injunction, refusing to restrict outdoor demonstrations while leaving the broader case to move forward.¹

What Trader Joe’s Filed and Who It Named

The complaint names Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), its San Francisco Bay Area chapter, and five individual defendants: Almira Tanner, Cassie King, Curtis Vollmar, Kyana Jones, and Carla Cabral. Tanner is DxE’s lead organizer, a role she has compared to an executive director.¹²

The core legal theory is trespass. The complaint says activists entered stores, marched through aisles, chanted, blocked access to products, and pulled items out of customers’ carts. Trader Joe’s asked the court to bar DxE members from using its stores “as a forum for the expression of their views,” arguing that continued trespass would cause irreparable harm and that damages would be difficult to calculate.³

The requested injunction was broad. Trader Joe’s asked the court to prohibit protests at all 205 of its California stores.⁴

What the Protests Looked Like

The conduct at issue escalated over the spring and summer of 2025. In May, DxE organized a weekend of action at more than two dozen Trader Joe’s stores across cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. At the South Pasadena location on May 4, activists lined up in front of the meat section and delivered speeches to customers about alleged animal abuse at Petaluma Poultry.⁵

Tactics varied by location. Activists carried megaphones, shouted profanities, performed skits, and removed items from customers’ baskets. At some stores, protesters allegedly posed as Trader Joe’s representatives. On July 2, 2025, one protester glued themselves to the meat aisle at a Pasadena store; the same day, another glued themselves to the front desk of Trader Joe’s corporate headquarters in Monrovia. Those involved were arrested and had court dates set for August 2025.⁶

By August, DxE had expanded beyond stores. At an Encino location, protesters played audio of chickens during slaughter, and members gathered near the personal residence of Trader Joe’s CEO Bryan Palbaum.⁷

What the Judge Ruled in August 2025

Judge Keith Fong partially denied Trader Joe’s injunction request. He declined to restrict outdoor demonstrations and reportedly criticized the company for refusing to engage with the activists. In practice, that left DxE free to keep protesting on sidewalks and public areas outside stores. An October 2025 demonstration in Montrose, California, showed the new pattern: activists stayed outside at the required distance, chanting, drumming, holding signs, and displaying video from a processing line.⁴

The broader case remains open. A case management conference was scheduled for December 2, 2025.¹

The mixed ruling tracks with California’s unusual rules on speech at private commercial property. Under the state’s PruneYard doctrine, California’s constitution protects speech and petitioning, reasonably exercised, in privately owned shopping centers. The U.S. Supreme Court has also said property owners may impose reasonable regulations to prevent interference with normal business operations, and that speech protections at freestanding stores may raise different questions than large shopping centers.⁸

Defendant Carla Cabral said in response to the suit: “We brought this to Trader Joe’s, but instead of listening, they blocked us, refused all dialogue, and hired powerful attorneys to try to shut us up.”¹

Why DxE Is Targeting Trader Joe’s

The dispute is really about a supplier. Trader Joe’s sells chicken from Petaluma Poultry, a California-based subsidiary of Perdue Farms, under its own private label, identifiable by USDA plant code P-2882. The packages carry “free-range” and “organic” labeling that DxE characterizes as misleading.⁹¹⁰

DxE says it has documented conditions at Petaluma Poultry since 2018, alleging birds collapsed and unable to walk, open wounds, splayed legs in overcrowded warehouses, and mortality at some sites reportedly more than double the industry standard.¹⁰ The group submitted evidence to federal, state, and Sonoma County officials. As of mid-2023, no government agency had announced formal enforcement action based on those submissions.¹¹

Petaluma Poultry states on its website that it is “dedicated to sustainable farming practices to ensure animal welfare and environmental stewardship” and that its practices are validated by third-party audits.¹²

The Separate Perdue Lawsuit

The Trader Joe’s case is not the only civil action running against DxE over this campaign. Perdue Foods filed its own suit seeking an injunction against activists who had been protesting outside the Santa Rosa home of Jason Arnold, Perdue’s director of operations for the Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse. Perdue alleged the protests amounted to a “campaign of terror” that “intentionally inflicted emotional distress on Mr. Arnold and his family, invaded his privacy, and put Mr. Arnold and his family in fear for their safety.”¹³

On May 13, 2025, DxE filed an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss, arguing the suit was a meritless attempt to silence protected speech and noting that no Santa Rosa ordinance restricts residential picketing.¹⁴ A combined hearing on the injunction request and the motion to dismiss was set for August 20, 2025, in Sonoma County Superior Court.¹⁵

DxE’s Track Record in Court

Founded in 2013, the Berkeley-based group practices what it calls “open rescue”: publicly entering farms, documenting conditions, and removing animals to test legal theories such as a “right to rescue” and a necessity defense.¹⁶ The strategy invites litigation by design.

Lead organizer Almira Tanner has said the group has been sued by Costco, Whole Foods, Diestel Turkey Ranch, Golden Gate Fields, and Perdue.² The results have been mixed. In a suit brought by Diestel Turkey Ranch, an Alameda County judge ruled against DxE on its false advertising claims for lack of standing and in Diestel’s favor on a cross-complaint for trespass and theft, after activists admitted illegally entering barns six times and taking six turkeys.¹⁷

On the criminal side, co-founder Wayne Hsiung was convicted in Sonoma County in November 2023 of felony conspiracy and two misdemeanor trespass counts tied to removals from Sunrise Farms in 2018 and Reichardt Duck Farm in 2019, and sentenced to 90 days in jail and two years of probation.¹⁸ A California appellate court overturned two of the three convictions on April 30, 2026, ruling that the trial judge should have let the jury consider a “mistake of law” defense, while upholding one misdemeanor trespass and rejecting the necessity defense on the ground that premeditated incursions do not qualify as responses to unforeseen emergencies.¹⁹ Earlier, Hsiung and Paul Darwin Picklesimer were acquitted in Utah in October 2022 of charges over removing two piglets from a Smithfield Foods facility, and in March 2023 activists Alicia Santurio and Alexandra Paul were acquitted of charges tied to removing two chickens from a Foster Farms transport truck in Merced.²⁰

That pattern is the backdrop for the Trader Joe’s case. The grocer is asking a civil court to draw a line around its stores; DxE is treating the litigation itself as part of the campaign. With outdoor protests protected for now and the trespass claims still pending, the next meaningful movement in the case was expected at the December 2, 2025 case management conference.¹

1
Press Democrat. Trader Joe’s Lawsuit Animal Activists
2
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3
Indybay. Trader Joe’s Lawsuit Against Direct Action Everywhere
4
Crescent Valley Weekly. Protesters Target Trader Joe’s in Montrose as Animal Rescuer Faces Trial
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South Pasadenan. Animal Rights Activists Disrupt South Pasadena Trader Joe’s, Part of Nationwide Weekend of Action
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14
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15
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16
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17
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19
Press Democrat. Court Overturns Animal Welfare Activist Wayne Hsiung’s Conviction on Two of Three Counts
20
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