Supreme Court rejects tobacco industry challenge to graphic anti-smoking images on cigarette packs

The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a challenge from major tobacco companies to the Food and Drug Administration’s requirement that they place graphic health warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a challenge from major tobacco companies to the Food and Drug Administration’s requirement that they place graphic health warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements. The FDA issued a rule in 2020 that requires health warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements, occupying the top 50% of the area on the front and back panels of packages and at least 20% of the area at the top of cigarette ads, according to the FDA. Among the 11 text-and-image graphics created by the agency for compliance with the rule is one that depicts a human lung and reads, “WARNING: Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers,” and another that includes an illustration of a boy holding an oxygen mask that says: “WARNING: Tobacco smoke can harm your children.” Several major tobacco sellers, including the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, sued, arguing that the warnings run afoul of the First Amendment and that the agency violated federal rulemaking procedures when it issued it. A federal judge in Texas initially sided with the companies and wiped away the rule. But the conservative-leaning 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and ruled in favor of the FDA. The appeals court said in a unanimous ruling issued in March that the rule “passes constitutional muster” under a decades-old Supreme Court standard that allows the government to compel commercial speech so long as the speech is “purely factual,” “uncontroversial,” “justified by a legitimate state interest” and “not unduly burdensome.”