Last May a federal judge in Texas appointed by President Trump again delayed ruling on the tobacco companies’ lawsuit against the Congressionally-mandated warnings on cigarette packs that the FDA finally issued in 2020. Now he has done it again, pushing the rule’s effective date for the warning labels by an additional 90 days, to October 6, 2023.
As I wrote before, not making a decision has effectively granted tobacco’s request for a preliminary injunction against the warning labels without actually having to demonstrate that the requirements to issue a preliminary injunction have been met.
But, by not actually granting the injunction, the Department of Justice (on FDA’s behalf) can’t appeal.
This continues to be an amazing abuse of judicial discretion.
This is something that the media needs to dig in to.
More important, the DOJ continues to sit quietly. It should file a writ of mandamus with the Court of Appeals to force action. At this point, the government has nothing to loose and the public has a lot to gain.
Stanton Glantz blog 