by SALT LAKE CITY — Two years after adopting a requirement for law labels to be accessible to consumers purchasing bedding, upholstered furniture and quilted clothing online, Utah officials have withdrawn their online law label requirement, the American Home Furnishings Alliance said this week.
In February, the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, which oversees labeling of bedding, furniture and quilted clothing sold in the state, filed to change its Rule 70-101 back to its original language, thereby dropping the online labeling requirement it originally adopted in April 2023. The rule change was published in the Utah State Bulletin on March 1, making the elimination of the online law label requirement in Utah effective April 7.
The AHFA said that UDAF took steps to eliminate the online law label requirement after learning Utah Sen. Brady Brammer introduced legislation that not only would have eliminated the online law label requirement but also would have repealed the state’s permitting and registration requirements for bedding and upholstered furniture.
In citing the reason for repealing the online law label requirement, UDAF said, “Specifically, these changes reflect the legislative intent to exclude online sales from regulation under this act.”
AHFA members learned about Utah’s proposed online law label requirement in the fall of 2022. Shortly thereafter, AHFA staff began working with UDAF to try and address an oversight in the proposal: It made no provision for special-order upholstery for which a law label is not available at the time of order.
Even stock items sold online might be sourced from a manufacturer using multiple factory locations or multiple cushion vendors — all resulting in slight variations in the required law label for otherwise identical products.
“It is important to understand that any deviations from the online law label and the law label on the actual product delivered to the customer’s home would have been considered a violation under the original rule,” said AHFA CEO Andy Counts.
To address the oversight, AHFA proposed allowing manufacturers to create a single text page listing all factory locations that produce a product, along with all available cushion options and a description of the filling materials in each option. Consumers would be able to access this page via a hyperlink in the online product description and be able to review the source and content options for their purchase.
Despite AHFA’s concerns, UDAF published its original law label requirement in April 2023, then announced in October it would engage in only “soft enforcement” as it worked through the industry’s concerns.
After nearly a year of discussion, which included AHFA hosting senior UDAF staff on a tour of several North Carolina upholstery plants in December 2023, the state agreed to add AHFA’s proposed text page solution to the online labeling rule. In February 2024, the department announced it had suspended the online law label requirement for 120 days, allowing time to make the necessary adjustments. In June 2024, it filed a notice of substantive change to R70-101 that incorporated AHFA’s recommendation.
Before the updated law label requirement was published, UDAF discovered it conflicted with a separate statute authorizing Utah’s tagging law program. This separate statute requires law labels to list filling materials by percentage, in order of predominance.
To allow the online labeling requirement to move forward, AHFA helped draft legislation to remove the requirement for labels to list cushion contents by percentage. Before this legislation could be considered, however, Sen. Brammer introduced his legislation to repeal the state’s permitting and registration requirements for bedding and upholstered furniture altogether.
Brammer’s proposal sent UDAF back to square one and led to withdrawal of the online labeling requirement. The state’s original requirements for permitting, registration and on-product law labels are unchanged.
