If you live in Houston and developed a meningioma after receiving the Depo-Provera birth control shot, you can join the Depo-Provera lawsuit by filing in the federal multidistrict litigation in Florida, where more than 5,500 cases against Pfizer are pending and the first trial is scheduled for December 7, 2026.1The lead bellwether case, Toney v. Pfizer, is scheduled for trial on December 7, 2026. No settlements have been reached, and Texas has no separate state-court coordination, so Houston claims are moving through the same federal proceeding as claims from across the country.
Who Can File a Claim
To bring a claim, a woman generally must have received at least two injections of brand-name Depo-Provera, Depo-SubQ Provera 104, or an authorized generic, and must later have been diagnosed with a meningioma. Medical records tying both the drug and the diagnosis together are the core evidence. When prescription records are not available, insurance billing data, pharmacy records, or a sworn declaration may be used to establish use.
Texas law sets a two-year statute of limitations for product liability claims, measured from the date the injury was discovered or reasonably should have been discovered. Meningiomas grow slowly, and many women only recently connected their tumor to Depo-Provera, so the discovery rule often applies. Texas also imposes a 15-year statute of repose measured from the date the product was first sold, which can cut off claims based on very old prescriptions. If you took the shot years ago, the timing of your diagnosis and when you first linked it to Depo-Provera matter more than the injection date itself.
Every plaintiff in the MDL must complete a Plaintiff Proof of Use and Injury Questionnaire within 120 days of filing, submitted under penalty of perjury through the BrownGreer MDL Centrality system. It requires documentation of the product used, when it was started, the meningioma diagnosis, and the diagnosis date. Failure to complete it can result in dismissal. The court has acknowledged that records from long-ago injections may be hard to obtain, but has said that does not excuse a lack of diligent effort.
Where Texas Cases Are Filed
On February 7, 2025, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated all federal Depo-Provera lawsuits into MDL No. 3140 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, before Judge M. Casey Rodgers. As of early June 2026, the MDL contained roughly 5,508 pending cases, with at least 436 more filed in state courts in Delaware, New York, California, Illinois, and other states. The count grew by nearly 1,740 cases in a single month between May and June 2026.
There are no known Texas-specific state court filings or coordination orders as of mid-2026. Houston plaintiffs are filing in the Florida MDL, and several law firms with Texas and Houston offices are investigating and accepting these claims.
What the Lawsuits Claim
The core claim is that Pfizer knew or should have known that Depo-Provera increased the risk of meningioma, a tumor that grows in the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, and failed to warn U.S. patients and doctors. Plaintiffs point out that Canadian labels have carried a meningioma warning since 2015 and European Union labels have carried one as well, while U.S. labeling did not mention meningioma for decades.
Failure-to-warn claims are the backbone of the litigation. Design-defect claims argue that a safer alternative already existed in Depo-SubQ Provera 104, which uses the same active ingredient at a lower dose (104 mg versus 150 mg) and is injected under the skin rather than into muscle. Complaints also include negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation, and allegations that Pfizer failed to conduct adequate pre- and post-market testing. Plaintiffs seek compensation for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, wrongful death where applicable, and, in some cases, punitive damages.
The Science Linking Depo-Provera to Meningioma
Three recent studies drive the causation argument. A French national case-control study published in The BMJ in March 2024 compared more than 18,000 women who had surgery for intracranial meningioma against roughly 90,000 matched controls and found that use of injectable medroxyprogesterone acetate, the active ingredient in Depo-Provera, was associated with a 5.6-fold increase in the odds of developing a meningioma requiring surgery, concentrated among women who used the drug for a year or longer.2BMJ, March 2024 national case-control study.
A 2025 study by Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University researchers, published in JAMA Neurology, analyzed records of more than 10 million U.S. women and found Depo-Provera users were approximately 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with meningioma than non-users, with risk rising with duration and among women who started the drug after age 31. A third study by Frey, published in Expert Opinion on Drug Safety in 2025, reported a roughly 3.5-fold increased risk after more than a year of use.
The biological explanation is that progesterone receptors are present in more than 60 percent of meningiomas, according to the BMJ authors, and medroxyprogesterone acetate, a synthetic progestin, may stimulate tumor growth by binding to those receptors. Some patients have reported tumor shrinkage after stopping the drug.
The FDA Label History and Pfizer’s Preemption Defense
In February 2024, Pfizer asked the FDA to add a meningioma warning to the Depo-Provera label. The FDA denied that request, concluding existing observational studies did not support the change. European and Canadian regulators added warnings to their high-dose MPA labels that same year. Pfizer resubmitted an amended application on June 12, 2025, and in December 2025 the FDA approved a label update warning that meningiomas have been reported with repeated administration, primarily with long-term use, and directing prescribers to monitor patients and discontinue the drug if a meningioma is diagnosed. Pfizer has said it first became aware of a potential link in 2023.
That timeline is now central to Pfizer’s defense. The company argues federal preemption bars state-law failure-to-warn claims because the FDA initially denied the 2024 request, meaning Pfizer could not have unilaterally changed the label. Plaintiffs respond that Pfizer misrepresented or withheld evidence during the labeling process, which would defeat preemption, and that the FDA’s December 2025 approval of the same warning undercuts the argument. Pfizer’s preemption motion was fully briefed on February 27, 2026, after supplemental briefing prompted by the label change, and no ruling had issued as of mid-June 2026. Any ruling will apply MDL-wide.
Key Dates Ahead
- Daubert hearing, June 24–26, 2026: a three-day hearing on whether plaintiffs’ expert testimony that Depo-Provera causes meningioma is admissible. Judge Rodgers’s ruling will apply to every case in the MDL.
- Preemption ruling: pending as of mid-June 2026, MDL-wide effect.
- First bellwether trial, December 7, 2026: Toney v. Pfizer. Four additional pilot cases (Blonski, Schmidt, Wilson, and Arceo) have been selected, with trial dates still to be set. More bellwether trials are expected in January 2027.
What Claims May Be Worth
No global settlement has been reached, and Pfizer has not announced an early settlement program. Legal observers expect meaningful settlement talks to begin only after the first bellwether verdict in late 2026 or early 2027. Legal analysts have published projected ranges based on injury severity and comparisons to other pharmaceutical litigation. These are estimates, not guarantees:
- Meningioma managed by monitoring only: $75,000 to $200,000
- Meningioma requiring surgery: $200,000 to $500,000
- Multiple tumors or recurrence: $400,000 to $750,000
- Permanent neurological impairment: $500,000 to $1,000,000 or more
- Wrongful death: $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 or more
Individual claim value will depend on tumor severity, whether surgery or radiation was needed, medical costs, documented lost income, long-term neurological effects, and how strongly the evidence ties the injury to Depo-Provera. The Toney verdict is expected to shape the settlement landscape heavily.
Why This Litigation Matters in Houston
The litigation carries particular weight for Houston, where Black and Hispanic residents make up a majority of the population. Federal survey data cited in legal analyses indicate that between 2015 and 2019, 41.2 percent of Black women and 27.2 percent of Hispanic women reported using Depo-Provera, compared to 24.5 percent of women overall. Reporting by Black Enterprise found that Black women use the contraceptive at nearly double the national rate and that a high percentage of users are low-income.
The drug’s history in these communities is also part of the backdrop. Depo-Provera was denied FDA approval three times between 1967 and 1983 before winning approval in 1992. During that period, according to Black Enterprise, the drug was administered without informed consent at facilities including the Grady Clinic in Atlanta, where roughly half the subjects were low-income Black women. The National Black Women’s Health Project opposed the drug’s eventual approval, citing safety concerns and a pattern of coercion.