R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company v. City of Edina, No. 20-2852 (8th Cir. 2023)
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The City of Edina, Minnesota, passed an ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco products. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company sued the City, arguing that the Ordinance is preempted by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The district court granted the City’s motion to dismiss, and Reynolds appealed.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling and held that the Ordinance is not preempted. The court reasoned that a plausible reading of the TCA allows state prohibitions, even “blanket” prohibitions, on the sale of flavored tobacco products. And because the TCA implicates state police powers, the court must accept the interpretation that disfavors preemption. If Congress wants to preempt these types of state rules, it should do so more clearly. The court concluded that the TCA does not expressly preempt the Ordinance.
Further, the Ordinance does not destroy Congress’s regulatory scheme. Although the TCA does grant the FDA exclusive authority to promulgate tobacco manufacturing standards, Section 387p can be plausibly interpreted as preserving state laws that relate to manufacturing, so long as they also relate to the sale of tobacco. Under that reading of the statute, the Ordinance does not “upend the TCA’s carefully calibrated regulatory scheme”—it operates within it.
Court Description: [Per Curiam - Before Colloton, Wollman, and Kobes, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The district court did not err in holding that the City of Edina, Minnesota's ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco products was not preempted by the Tobacco Control Act, 123 Stat. 1776, 1777 (2009). Because the Tobacco Control Act is ambiguous and implicates traditional state police powers, the court must adopt a reading of the Savings Clause in the Act that disfavors preemption; when read as an exception, the Savings Clause allows the Ordinance because it relates to the sale of tobacco; on the record before the court, it cannot conclude that the Ordinance conflicts with or imposes an obstacle to Congress' purposes and objectives in passing the Act.
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