CNN
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The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a major tobacco company’s challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s requirement to include graphic health warnings on cigarette packages and advertisements.
In 2020, the FDA issued regulations requiring health warnings to appear on cigarette packages and advertisements, covering at least 50% of the front and back panel area of the package and at least 20% of the top area of cigarette advertisements. It is said that it was compulsory to occupy the To the FDA.
Among the 11 text and image graphics created by the agency to help comply with the rules are one depicting human lungs and the other saying, “Warning: Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in non-smokers.” Some are written and some include illustrations of young boys. He holds an oxygen mask that says, “Warning: Tobacco smoke can be harmful to children.”
Several major tobacco retailers, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, have filed lawsuits alleging that the warnings violate the First Amendment and that the agency violated federal rulemaking procedures when issuing the warnings. I woke you up.
A federal judge in Texas initially sided with the companies and wiped out the rule. But the conservative-leaning U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and ruled in favor of the FDA.
In a unanimous decision issued in March, the appeals court ruled that the decades-old rule allows governments to compel commercial speech as long as the speech is “purely factual” and “uncontroversial.” Based on the standards set by the Supreme Court in 2009, he said, “It passes constitutional consensus.” “Justified by legitimate national interests” and “not an undue burden.”
The court remanded the case to a lower court for further consideration, but the companies appealed to the Supreme Court before proceedings resumed.
Lawyers for tobacco companies told the judges in court papers that the warnings required by the rule are “unprecedented in U.S. history,” and if the appeals court’s ruling is upheld, the government would require similar warnings. He warned me that I would have to give him permission. It sells a variety of products “to bully consumers into not using them.”
They also stated that the warning illustrations were “designed to shock rather than inform, as the large-scale, inflammatory graphics go far beyond what is needed to convey a simple factual message.” “There is,” he claimed.
The Biden administration asked the high court not to take up the case, arguing that the appeals court was right to reinstate the rule because “warnings promote public understanding of the risks[related to tobacco]. be reasonably related to the government’s interest in doing so and not be unduly burdensome.
Government lawyers also argued that the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the companies’ claims that the FDA violated federal rulemaking process when it issued the new requirements. He said the case should not be taken up.
The case could go through the lower courts and then come back to the high court.
