WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court yesterday struck down a law that requires tobacco companies to use graphic health warnings, such as of a man exhaling smoke through a hole in his throat.
The 2-1 decision by the court in Washington, D.C., contradicts another appeals court’s ruling in a similar case earlier this year, setting up the possibility the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on the dispute.
The court’s majority in the latest ruling found the label requirement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration violated corporate speech rights.
“This case raises novel questions about the scope of the government’s authority to force the manufacturer of a product to go beyond making purely factual and accurate commercial disclosures and undermine its own economic interest — in this case, by making ‘every single pack of cigarettes in the country mini billboard’ for the government’s anti-smoking message,” wrote Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The FDA “has not provided a shred of evidence” showing that the graphic labels would reduce smoking, Brown added.
Five tobacco companies representing most of the major cigarette makers in the United States challenged the FDA rules: Reynolds American Inc, Lorillard Inc ; Commonwealth Brands Inc, which is owned by Britain’s Imperial Tobacco Group Plc ; Liggett Group LLC and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co Inc.
