U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenge to California's Flavored Tobacco Ban

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After declining to institute an injunction against California's flavored tobacco ban in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court now has decided not to hear a challenge against the law brought by British American Tobacco subsidiary R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., allowing the ban to remain in effect.

The court rejected an appeal by R.J. Reynolds and other plaintiffs, stemming from a lower court's ruling holding that California's law did not conflict with a federal statute regulating tobacco products, according to reporting from Reuters. The law now makes California the largest state to ban the sale of any flavored tobacco products.

The final determination by the court followed a rather long and circuitous path since the original legislation was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020. Though passed by near universal consensus by both the state assembly and senate, the ban was not without controversy. 

Two months after signing, the California Coalition for Fairness submitted more than 1 million signatures from registered voters to the Secretary of State's office in a bid to get a veto referendum to overturn the legislation onto the November 2022 ballot. The potential referendum then delayed the implementation of the legislation, which had originally been scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of 2021.

Despite the lobbying effort by R.J. Reynolds and others to whip up support for the voters' veto, the referendum failed by 25 points, with 62.3 percent of the public voting to uphold the ban.

Two days after the referendum vote, tobacco companies filed a lawsuit against California and sought a preliminary injunction to place the ban on hold while they sought judicial relief. However, neither the District Court for the Southern District of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit nor the Supreme Court agreed to block the law, and with the suit's appeals exhausted, California can move ahead with full legal implementation.

This will likely not be the end of the battle over flavored tobacco products and regulations in the U.S. In November, numerous industry associations, including NACS and the Convenience Distribution Association, spoke out against the newest attempt by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's to ban menthol from cigarettes and flavored cigars, while numerous municipalities have moved ahead with their own localized flavored tobacco bans.