Supreme Court Decision

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Justice Stevens (pictured) wrote in the Wyeth v. Levine opinion for the court: If Congress thought state lawsuits posed an obstacle to its objectives, it surely would have enacted an express pre-emption provision at some point during the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act’s 70 year history…Its silence on the issue, coupled with its certain awareness of the prevalence of state tort litigation, is powerful evidence that Congress did not intend FDA oversight to be the exclusive means of ensuring drug safety and effectiveness.”

Surprisingly, even Justice Thomas, concurred with Justice Stevens and also dismissed the Wyeth preemption argument, defining it as unconstitutional:

“Because such a sweeping approach to pre-emption leads to the illegitimate – and thus, unconstitutional – invalidation of state laws, I can no longer assent to a doctrine that pre-empts state laws merely because they ‘stand as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives’ of federal law.”