The Supreme Court refused an emergency application in a Dec. 12 ruling to block California’s enforcement of a voter-approved ban on flavored tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, that takes effect next week.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. had asked the high court for an emergency injunction preventing enforcement of California Senate Bill 793 while it pursues appeals in the lower courts.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had denied the company’s request to block the law, which takes effect on Dec. 21, in a Nov. 28 ruling.
The company is arguing in a federal lawsuit that the ban is beyond the authority of the state and violates the supremacy and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
The case is R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Bonta (court file 22A474). Respondent Rob Bonta, a Democrat, is the attorney general of California.
The application was referred to Justice Elena Kagan, who referred the matter to the full Supreme Court. The court turned down the application in an unsigned order without explaining why. No justices indicated that they dissented from the decision.
This isn’t necessarily the end of the road for the case at the Supreme Court. Although the court rejected the current application in an emergency posture, the case could return to it in the future.
According to the company, the law violates the federal Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act and will hurt Reynolds because it will be unable to sell its products in one of the nation’s largest markets.
Reynolds will be unable to sell menthol cigarettes—which make up about one-third of the cigarette market—in California.
“Many smaller entities, including family-owned retailers, will likely have to close shop entirely and lay off their employees,” the company stated in a brief.
“For more than a century, states have carried out their authority to ‘guard the health’ of their citizens by enacting laws that restrict how tobacco products ‘may be sold,’ and sometimes ... ‘prohibit their sale entirely,’” the brief stated, citing earlier precedent.
“Voters in California recently joined other states and local jurisdictions in banning the retail sale of flavored tobacco products.
“Those laws respond to the manifest threat that flavored tobacco products present to public health: As the federal government has acknowledged, flavored tobacco products are the central cause of unfavorable trends in youth addiction to tobacco.
“And young people who are initiated into tobacco use through flavored tobacco products are more likely to become long-term users and suffer grievous health effects as a result.”
Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, hailed the Supreme Court’s decision, calling it “a major victory for kids and public health ... [that] will allow this lifesaving law to take effect later this month.” The anti-smoking group and allied organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court.
“While today’s decision is about Reynolds’ request for an injunction and not the merits of the company’s arguments, the Supreme Court should ultimately reject these arguments and uphold the law as well,” Myers told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“The California law was passed in response to the clear evidence that flavored products have fueled the youth e-cigarette epidemic and the tobacco industry’s continued predatory targeting of black and other communities, especially kids, with flavored products such as menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.”
Bonta said in a statement, “Flavored tobacco products have hooked a new generation of young smokers at a time when tobacco is already the number one preventable killer in the United States.
“I applaud the Supreme Court for denying Big Tobacco’s latest attempt to block California’s commonsense ban on flavored tobacco products.”
The office of Francisco didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
