Supreme Court declines to review flavored cigarette ban in California

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a challenge to the flavored cigarette ban in California, meaning the state law will remain in place.

Tobacco and cigarette companies argued that states do not have the authority to ban flavored cigarettes under the federal Tobacco Control Act (TCA). California’s ban on flavored tobacco products went into effect in December 2022, after 62 percent of the state’s voters voted in favor of prohibiting the sale of flavored tobacco products that year.

“Under the TCA, states have broad authority to regulate the sale of tobacco products. They can raise the minimum purchase age, restrict sales to particular times and locations, and enforce licensing regimes. But one thing they cannot do is completely prohibit the sale of those products for failing to meet the state’s preferred tobacco product standards,” the companies wrote in their request for the Supreme Court to take up the case.

“That is because the TCA’s preemption clause specifically denies states and localities the power to enact ‘any requirement which is different from, or in addition to,’ federal ‘tobacco product standards,’’ they added.

The companies contended that the Supreme Court should take up the case because the ban “shut the doors to one of the Nation’s largest markets for flavored tobacco products and thereby banned a product (menthol cigarettes) that has been lawfully sold for nearly a century.”

California had urged the Supreme Court to not take up the case. California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said the responsibility of regulating tobacco products was left up to the states and cited previous rulings as examples in his request for the court to not take up the case.

“This Court long ago recognized the broad authority of the States to regulate in that way. In upholding a Tennessee law that categorically banned the sale of cigarettes, the Court concluded that it is ‘within the province of the legislature to say how far [cigarettes] may be sold, or to prohibit their sale entirely,’” Bonta wrote.