Court Rules Against Cigarette Warning Labels

1 March 2012
NACSonline

D.C. District Judge Richard Leon has ruled that FDA’s tobacco labeling requirements are unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON – A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) mandate to force tobacco companies to put graphic warning labels on cigarette packages was an unconstitutional infringement of the companies’ First Amendment rights.

The graphic labels do not simply convey facts to inform people’s decision whether to smoke, Judge Richard Leon said, but instead force the cigarette makers to display government anti-smoking advocacy more prominently than their own branding. The FDA had argued unsuccessfully that the public interest in conveying the dangers of smoking outweighs the companies’ free speech rights.

In his ruling, Judge Leon wrote that the graphic images “were neither designed to protect the consumer from confusion or deception, nor to increase consumer awareness of smoking risks; rather, they were crafted to evoke a strong emotional response calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never start smoking.” He pointed out various alternatives for the federal government to curb tobacco use, such as increasing anti-smoking advertisements, raising tobacco taxes, reducing the size and changing content of the labels and improving efforts to reduce youth access to tobacco.

In all likelihood, FDA will appeal this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That appeals court is currently scheduled to hold oral arguments on April 10th on a temporary injunction issued last November that put FDA’s warning label rule on hold. Wednesday’s final ruling on the merits of the case gives the appeals court the ability to rule on the case and the injunction at the same time. The rule was scheduled to take effect in September 2012, but FDA announced yesterday that this date was now “uncertain” due to the ongoing litigation.