A Federal District Court for the Southern District of Iowa sided with e-cigarette industry plaintiffs in a preliminary ruling against the state, temporarily halting the enforcement of the state’s PMTA registration law. On May 3, Chief Judge Stephanie Rose issued a temporary stay on HF 2677, which would have required vape products to have marketing authorization from the Food and Drug Administration between 2016 and 2020 in order to be sold in Iowa.
“As the plaintiff alleges, Congress intended to concentrate enforcement authority on the FDA in Section 337(a) of the FDCA, aiming to prevent states from adopting inconsistent enforcement methods that would undermine the federal regulatory system,” Rose said in the ruling. “Iowa acknowledges that the legislative motive is the ‘absence of federal enforcement,’ which reflects why Congress has granted such enforcement powers to the federal government.”
The bill was passed by the state legislature in April 2024 and signed by the governor in May, with an effective date set for February 2025. The Attorney General of Iowa agreed to temporarily pause enforcement of the law, awaiting the court’s decision on the preliminary injunction after the Iowa State E-cigarette Industry Association filed a lawsuit in December, which claimed the state’s policy would hurt local businesses and lead to vaping products being pulled from the shelves.
The court ruled that the Iowa law “impermissibly intrudes upon the federal government’s exclusive authority” to enforce the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which ensures that food, medicine, cosmetics, and medical devices are safe and properly labeled.
“It’s definitely a win in the right direction,” said Ashley Hartman, chief strategy officer for Central Iowa Vapors. “It essentially would have shut our stores down. There’s only 26 products that are currently approved on the registry federally and so that would have completely wiped away everything in our stores.”
The ruling holds extra significance in that the Vapor Technology Association plans to apply for a preliminary injunction next week in a similar registration bill in North Carolina. The Iowa ruling could provide a legal precedent for other states facing similar lawsuits regarding PMTA registration laws.
