U.S. Supreme Court building

The Artifices of Corporate Speech: Video Preview with Nathan Cortez

The Health Law Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts.

The workshop is led by Professor I. Glenn Cohen, and presenters come from a wide range of disciplines and departments.

In this video, Nathan Cortez gives a preview of his paper, “The Artifices of Corporate Speech,” which he will present at the Health Law Policy workshop on October 26, 2020. Watch the full video below:

lady justice.

When Health Advice Is Hard to Come by, BIPOC Suffer the Consequences

By Claudia E. Haupt

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the tradeoffs at stake for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) seeking reliable health advice.

While there are legal safeguards to ensure reliable health advice within the confines of the doctor-patient relationship, outside of that relationship, the First Amendment protects bad advice just as much as good advice.

Courts continue to interpret the First Amendment in an expanding, deregulatory manner and the health context is no exception. For example, one novel judicial interpretation challenges previously accepted applications of the police power in furthering public health. In a forthcoming article, “Public Health Originalism and the First Amendment,” my colleague Wendy Parmet and I explore some of the dangers associated with this deregulatory approach.

Overall, the beneficiaries of these recent developments tend to be powerful speakers. The costs have largely fallen on women, as seen for example in NIFLA v. Becerra, and those who lack access to reliable medical advice, who are disproportionately BIPOC. Current First Amendment doctrine thus has the dangerous potential to further exacerbate existing racial disparities in health.

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Photograph of a person holding an e-cigarette in one hand and traditional cigarettes in the other hand.

FDA’s Warning Letter to Juul & the First Amendment

By Daniel Aaron

On September 10, 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning letter to Juul asserting that the vaping manufacturer had violated federal law by illegally marketing its e-cigarettes as safer than other products. Citing evidence uncovered at a July 2019 House Subcommittee hearing as well as industry documents, FDA claims that Juul marketed its products as modified-risk tobacco products (MRTPs) without an FDA order allowing the product to be marketed as such. Therefore, FDA concluded, Juul’s products are adulterated.

At first blush, this seems like a heavy-hitting letter. FDA warning letters are an effective enforcement tool because they intimidate regulated entities and carry the threat of further enforcement. FDA likely hopes Juul will bring itself into compliance with federal law by ceasing to market its products as lower-risk.

However, enforcement letters carry no legal weight in and of themselves. Should Juul continue to market its products as lower-risk, there may be a long legal battle implicating the First Amendment.

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How the FDA Produces Knowledge (and Is Not So Weird)

Credit: SalFalko

The Federal government has wrested billions of dollars from the drug and device industry in settlements of claims that the companies broke the law by promoting their products “off-label” for uses not approved by the FDA.  In response, companies have asserted that promotions are a form of speech, protected by the First Amendment. Speech regulations are especially worrisome when motivated by paternalism.  This argument has received some traction in the courts, and is now getting a favorable look by the Trump administration.

I have argued (here, here, and here) that this law is not actually a speech regulation.  Nor is it paternalistic.  Instead, it is simply a vanilla regulation of a behavior (shipment of product in interstate commerce), which depends on various sources of evidence (including speech) as revealing whether the actor has an illicit intent (an unapproved use of the product).  The pre-market approval system, which requires that companies prove safety and efficacy for all intended uses, solves a collective action problem to produce information as a public good.  This is our key social mechanism for producing knowledge about safety and efficacy.  If this law is unconstitutional in the off-label context, the entire pre-market approval system would seem to be as well.

In a new piece out on SSRN, my physician co-author Victor Laurion develops the example of the drug Seroquel XR, to show how a federal prosecution for off-label promotion caused the company to perform scientific research on two new indications (general anxiety disorder and major depression).  A detailed discussion of the regulatory record shows how physician prescribing was improved by this public information, regardless of whether the FDA approved the new indication.  In this way, the FDA protects the liberty of physicians and patients to try drugs for new uses, even while holding companies to the proof of any uses that they actually intend.  The fact that the company’s intention is shown by speech evidence is immaterial. Read More

Is it legal for Trump to punish health insurers that do not support repeal of Obamacare?

By Christopher Robertson

In a recent story about how the health insurance marketplaces are being destabilized by the Trump administration’s vacillation, the LA Times reports:

At one recent meeting, Seema Verma, whom Trump picked to oversee the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, stunned insurance industry officials by suggesting a bargain: The administration would fund the CSRs if insurers supported the House Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

For what its worth, the Trump administration denied that she had done so.  But if she did, is that legal?  Can politicians actually offer to give money from the Federal Treasury to companies in exchange for their political support (or withhold it for lack of that support)?  If Ms. Verma was corruptly offering a “quid pro quo” exchange (as TalkingPointsMemo says), that would fit the statutory definition of the crime of bribery, as I discuss in a 2016 paper, The Appearance and Reality of Quid Pro Quo Corruption. However, this case also implicates the First Amendment rights of the insurance companies to support or oppose the Obamacare repeal. Read More

Vaccinate Your Children (Says a Federal Judge)

Flickr Creative Commons-Dan Hatton
Flickr Creative Commons-Dan Hatton

By Gregory M. Lipper

After nearly four years fighting about whether and when employers may exclude contraceptive coverage from employee health plans (and even block others from providing that coverage), it’s perhaps refreshing to see less controversial cases. And few healthcare-exemption cases are less controversial than those brought by parents who object to vaccinating their children. Although the challenged laws are objectively more intrusive than the contraceptive regulations—vaccination laws require parents to get the offending treatment injected into their children—courts thus far have correctly dismissed these challenges with little fanfare.

This dynamic surfaced again in a recent federal trial-court decision in California, in which the court dismissed a federal and state constitutional challenge to California legislation repealing the “personal belief exemption” to requirements that those entering schools and child-care facilities get vaccinated against diseases—including diphtheria, measles, mumps, rubella, and other dreadful ailments. The court acknowledged that eliminating the personal-belief exemption “raises principled and spirited religious and conscientious objections by genuinely caring parents and concerned citizens,” but stated that “the wisdom of the Legislature’s decision is not for this Court to decide.” Because the legislature decided to scrap the personal-belief exemption, California now exempts only those children (1) with actual medical reasons for avoiding the vaccination, (2) who are home schooled, or (3) who qualify for an Individualized Education Program under federal disabilty law. That’s a much more limited and manageable group of exemptees.

Although quite a relief for those seeking to minimize gratuitous suffering from preventable diseases, the court’s decision implicates several knotty legal issues and is worth exploring further.

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Recent Developments in Off-Label Promotion

By Chris Robertson

July has been a busy month for those following the controversy around off-label promotion of drugs and devices.  As many on this blog know, federal law requires that prior to marketing any drug or device, companies must prove to the FDA’s satisfaction that it is safe and effective for all intended uses.  If the company reveals that it intends unapproved uses,  sales of the drug or device are illegal.  Nonetheless, physicians can prescribe “off-label,” and companies are free to sell for those known-but-not-intended purposes.

This carefully-wrought policy may seem convoluted, but it serves important epistemic and economic purposes, as I have argued elsewhere.  This month, I have a new draft paper on SSRN, assessing recent assertions of a First Amendment right to promote for uses not approved by the FDA, and consider whether such a right would be equally applicable to drugs that have no FDA-approved label at all. I worry that the entire pre-market approval regime may be at stake. Feedback on that intentionally-provocative analysis is quite welcome.

On Wednesday, two medical device company executives, were convicted of promoting a product “to deliver steroid medications to patients’ sinuses, though it was only approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for keeping sinuses open.”  The prosecutors thought the case was particularly egregious, because the company had intended the broader use to deliver medicine all along, but sought to mislead the FDA, denying it the chance review the safety and efficacy of the real intended use.  The jury instructions and verdict form  are particularly interesting, to see how the government’s trial strategy avoids the holding of a Second Circuit case of Caronia, which overturned a conviction on First Amendment grounds.  I’ll return with some analysis later. Read More

Religion or Women?

In response to the religious objections levied against the contraceptives coverage mandate at issue in Hobby Lobby, Zubik, and gobs of other cases, many have argued that this was really a matter of subjugating women – not about religion per se.  Well, now we have a test case: Vermont’s governor just signed into law a requirement that public and private health insurance cover vasectomies without copays and deductibles. There won’t be the same arguments about abortifacients here, but many religious employers should object just the same, if they’re being consistent. Now let’s watch and see…

SCOTUS and More Surprises on Zubik

After the 2014 SCOTUS decision in Hobby Lobby, in which a closely-held for-profit employer won the argument that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act protected it against enforcement of the government’s contraceptives coverage mandate, all eyes have been on what SCOTUS would do in response to a challenge to the very same accommodation it toyed with as a less restrictive alternative in that case.  The Court agreed to hear a consolidated set of challenges to the accommodation brought by several religious non-profit employers who seek outright exemption from the mandate (under the case name Zubik et al.) – but then Justice Scalia passed away, leaving the Court with the unpalatable prospect of a 4-4 decision.

SCOTUS has pulled a few tricks out of its hat to avoid that possibility.  First, it surprised us by seeking supplemental briefs on a possible compromise solution, which would ostensibly allow women to access contraceptives (as the government desires) while not burdening the religious employers (as they desire).  The parties basically responded, as politely as would be expected, that some compromise was indeed possible – but not on terms the other could or would actually accept.  Nonetheless, today, SCOTUS surprised us again – seeing enough glimmer of a possible compromise to decline to decide the cases on the merits, instead returning them to the lower courts to work something out.

So what does that mean?  In my view, count it as a win for the government.  Eight out of nine circuit courts ruled in the government’s favor below, holding that the accommodation it had already offered did not substantially burden employers’ religious beliefs – which means that RFRA’s further protection, demanding a compelling government interest satisfied in the least restrictive way, does not even get triggered. These courts have no reason to change that determination now.  Even if there is a compromise that would be less burdensome on religious employers (which I don’t think there is), such a compromise is not required under RFRA unless there is a substantial burden.  And SCOTUS hasn’t said there is.

What we have here is, ironically, precisely the same result we’d have had if SCOTUS had issued a 4-4 decision.  The lower court opinions will almost certainly stand, and we’ll likely still have a bit of a circuit split. So now, we wait on a new president.  The Donald would presumably destroy the ACA/mandate entirely, whereas Hillary would hopefully be able to deliver a ninth justice that will recognize RFRA’s reasonable limits.  Religious freedom is critically important, but so too is accepting the government’s dramatic efforts to be accommodating, short of letting every religious believer be an island unto himself.