UK supreme court denies tobacco firms permission for plain packaging appeal

All cigarettes sold in the UK must have standardised packaging from next month after the supreme court refused permission to the tobacco industry to appeal against the new laws.

This is the final domestic legal decision, meaning that plain packaging of cigarettes will come into force on 20 May, the Department of Health said.

Rules requiring tobacco to be packaged in drab, dark brown packs with no graphic branding came into effect in May 2016, with branded packs subsequently being phased out.

Tobacco companies went to the supreme court after the court of appeal last November rejected their attempt to prevent the introduction of mandatory plain packaging of cigarettes in the UK.

British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and Philip Morris International claimed that the law would infringe their human and intellectual property rights.

The new packs are the same shape, size and colour, with two thirds of the front and back surfaces covered by pictorial health warnings, and written warnings on the sides.

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, welcomed the supreme court’s decision, saying: “Standardised packaging will cut smoking rates and reduce suffering, disease and avoidable deaths.”

Smoking remains the biggest cause of premature mortality in the UK, killing more than 100,000 Britons annually, despite Public Health England figures showing a decline in the number of smokers to fewer than one in six adults.

Widespread use of e-cigarettes, nicotine patches and gum helped a record 500,000 smokers kick the habit in 2015, the agency said, bringing the number of ex-smokers in England to 14.6 million.

In 1974, more than half of men in Britain smoked, but that fell in England to just 19.1% by 2015. The rate for women declined from just over 40% in 1974 to only 14.9% in 2015.

The chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, said: “Smoking is the biggest preventable killer in this country and this legislation will save lives, so I am thrilled that the tobacco industry will not be allowed to appeal. After years of hard work, I look forward to seeing this policy now brought in, and smoking numbers fall even further.”

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the health charity Ash (Action on Smoking and Health UK), said the ruling finally ended attempts by “big tobacco” to overturn the UK legislation on standardised packaging.

“This is the latest in a long line of crushing legal defeats for the tobacco industry. Over the years the industry has squandered many millions of pounds of its own money in futile legal challenges, but worse still it has wasted public time and money, which could have been much better spent improving public health.”

In a sign that tobacco companies acknowledge that the tide of public opinion is turning against them, the boss of Marlboro maker Philip Morris has predicted a “phase-out period” for cigarettes.

André Calantzopoulos made the comments in November as the company launched a new product it claimed was less harmful than traditional smoking. The iQos heats tobacco but does not burn it, releases fewer toxins and is capable of replacing cigarettes in the long term, according to Philip Morris.

However, campaigners and analysts questioned whether e-cigarettes or other products such as the iQos would ever replace cigarettes.

Arnott said at the time: “Philip Morris claims to be moving towards a post-smoking future but, like other tobacco companies, it is still actively promoting smoking around the world, using methods that would be illegal in the UK.”

UK supreme court denies tobacco firms permission for plain packaging appeal

Reactions to the supreme court"s ruling on corporation"s religious rights

The supreme court ruled in a bitter, split choice that some companies must have a religious exemption concerning certain contraceptives. Conservatives cheered for the victories of Pastime Lobby and Conestoga Wood, even though condemnation came from liberals, foremost among them justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote a scathing dissent

Reactions to the supreme court"s ruling on corporation"s religious rights

Will The Supreme Court"s Contraceptive Decision Influence Coverage Of Other Medication?

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a decision whereby closely-held firms can deny the ACA coverage provision for some contraceptives due to the fact of the corporations’ founding family’s religious beliefs.

Hobby Lobby and Conestoga the two refused to offer worker converge for four of the 20 contraceptive methods approved by the FDA, exclusively these that stop uterine implantation of a fertilized egg.

The Court ruled that the companies are permitted the latitude for coverage denial underneath the Religious Freedom

Recall that these businesses are not in the enterprise of conducting religious solutions or overseas humanitarian missions as their principal enterprise. They are for-profit companies. The ruling enables the companies to refuse coverage since of the religious beliefs of person leaders.

Beyond the ruling selectively singling-out women’s reproductive care, the determination raises the question of whether or not corporate leadership elsewhere might refuse coverage of other medicines due to religious beliefs. I’ve been concerned about this stage because pharmacist organizations permit the conscientious objection of individual pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception. Would pharmacists have the correct to workout their conscience in refusing to fill opioid prescriptions since they worry the drugs will be abused?

In the dissenting view, Justices wrote far more extensively,

“Would the exemption the Court holds RFRA demands for employers with religiously grounded objections to the use of particular contraceptives extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses) antidepressants (Scientologists) medicines derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (sone Muslims, Jews, and Hindus) and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, between others)?”

“According to counsel for Pastime Lobby, “each one particular of these circumstances . . . would have to be evaluated on its very own . . . apply[ing] the compelling interest-least restrictive substitute check.” Not significantly assist there for the reduced courts bound by today’s decision.”

The majority view held that no this kind of instances have come ahead of the court, for that reason, this kind of issues must not be anticipated. But Justice Ginsburg wrote for the minority that religious objections to immunization applications, for illustration, are not merely hypothetical. Just this year, a Brooklyn Federal District Court Judge denied a religious challenge to New York’s “social distancing” provision of their childhood immunization school laws that calls for individuals not vaccinated for a vaccine-preventable illness to keep house in the course of declared disease outbreaks.

Ginsburg also cited this quick from Liberty Counsel

The American Public Overall health Association has previously come out decrying today’s ruling. APHA Executive Director, Georges Benjamin, M.D., wrote in a four-paragraph statement,

“The ruling contradicts broadly accepted healthcare care standards, which ensure that females are not denied entry by employers to the total assortment of crucial preventive health care services…”

“…By limiting the contraceptive coverage clause, the Supreme Court positioned the curiosity of a corporation ahead of the overall health of girls. APHA and the public well being community strongly oppose today’s ruling.”

Will The Supreme Court"s Contraceptive Decision Influence Coverage Of Other Medication?

The US supreme court"s abortion buffer zone ruling protects a gauntlet of horror | Jessica Valenti

Imagine making an attempt to stroll into a constructing, making an attempt to get a health care treatment method – and someone screams at you. Someone is two inches from your face – two feet from the front door – and that someone is videotaping you, calling you a whore. There is ketchup poured in the snowbanks around you, produced to appear like spurted blood. You try to consider a phase forward, but folks block your way, yelling that you happen to be going to be “mom to a dead infant”. They hold indicators in your faces, whisper “murderer” in your ear as you pass. Maybe they shove you.

Never believe portrayals to the contrary – from anti-choice activists and the information media – that these kinds of protestors outdoors abortion clinics are not grandmas praying, or kindly “counselors” who just want to speak fairly to women. These men and women wait outside clinics to shame and to harass they are there to scare.

Despite the horrifying experiences of ladies across the nation making an attempt to acquire abortions, the US supreme court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a Massachusetts law providing a 35-foot buffer zone outdoors of clinics is unconstitutional, and violates protesters’ first amendment proper to engage in “individual, caring, consensual conversations” with females seeking abortions.

Private, caring and consensual?

Katie Klabusich, a reproductive rights activist who has volunteered as an escort at 6 clinics across the country, tells me she is “terrified”.

Just before a buffer zone was enacted at 1 clinic exactly where she volunteered in New Jersey, Klabuish says it took six or 7 escorts to safeguard a single patient and her companion from picketers yelling racist and sexist epithets in their faces.

“You could still hear them yelling in the procedure room,” she told me on Thursday soon after the determination in McCullen v Coakley.

Klabusich says the lack of a buffer zone was particularly hard when women getting would come to the clinic soon after a health-related transport from the hospital – most with wished pregnancies that had put their wellness or life in danger:

These are ladies in obvious bodily distress, and I’ve noticed seven or eight picketers surround a medical van so a sick woman couldn’t get to a physician. This is what buffer zones support to end.

According to a statement by Dr Nancy L Stanwood of Physicians for Reproductive Well being, practically 90% of abortion companies report that sufferers in their facility have “expressed considerations about their personalized security,” and above 80% of clinics have referred to as police due to the fact of safety worries.

Abortion suppliers are not attempting to limit cost-free speech – they are making an attempt safeguard their individuals from what has turn out to be a gauntlet of terror. Thursday’s ruling might not eradicate all buffer zones overnight, but it provides safety to people who need to have it least, although ignoring the vulnerable females who are being harassed and intimidated for doing exercises a legal proper.

Let’s please not fail to remember the arson and bombings of clinics, the threats of anthrax, the shootings and – of course – the multiple murders of abortion companies and clinic workers. Abortion clinics are not secure locations – anti-choicers have ensured that – and if women are genuinely to have the appropriate to seek abortions free of charge from violence and harassment, they need to be.

The supreme court’s choice is not as unanimous as it may possibly appear, and it is not the end: pro-option activists are expressing outrage, sharing stories and organizing on the Twitter hashtag #protectthezone, and Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards says that the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts is “already working with legislature on a new bill to safeguard women from harassment”.

But for the girls searching for abortions in the days and weeks to come – and for the providers, employees and volunteers who put their lives on the line each day to make sure girls have entry to secure healthcare care – this ruling will effect them instantly. It will make females significantly less safe, medical doctors and clinic staff more fearful, and violent harassers emboldened. This is not the “cost-free speech” we’re fighting for.

The US supreme court"s abortion buffer zone ruling protects a gauntlet of horror | Jessica Valenti

Supreme court situations ahead: cellphones, contraception and world wide web Television

It really is crunch time at the US supreme court, exactly where the justices are racing to situation opinions in far more than a dozen instances above the following two weeks.

On Monday, the court threw out out Argentina’s appeal above 2001 debt default, and revived a challenge by two conservative groups who oppose an Ohio law that punishes knowingly false political statements.

But still to come: the religious rights of firms, the speech rights of abortion protesters and the privacy rights of folks underneath arrest are among the significant problems that are so far unresolved.

Summer season travel, European teaching gigs and relaxation beckon the justices, but only soon after the court hands down selections in all the circumstances it has heard because October.

In unusual instances, the justices will place off decisions and purchase a case to be argued yet again in the next term.

This is also the time of the 12 months when a justice could announce a retirement. But the oldest of the justices, 81-year-outdated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has signaled she will serve at least one particular much more 12 months, and maybe longer.

The justices will meet again Thursday to situation opinions, and could wind up their perform by the end of the month. Main instances remain that will have key repercussions:

Cellphone searches and arrest privacy

Two instances weigh the power of police to search the cellphones of people they location under arrest without having very first getting a warrant from a judge. The Guardian’s Dan Roberts recorded how justices at occasions struggled to comprehend technological advances. “What is the variation amongst [pictures stored on a smartphone and] hard copy pictures in a billfold?” asked justice Samuel Alito. “I will not see there is much of a difference,” he extra.

Justice Stephen Breyer appeared to bemuse lawyers by referring to the “brzzing” sound of phones and “buzzers” you can push. “[What if] they can just cough and encrypt it?” asked Breyer when discussing why seizing a mobile phone may possibly not be sufficient to prevent evidence tampering.

When one particular lawyer commenced a response by saying “I don’t know what type of smartphone you have, maybe an iPhone,” Breyer responded: “I do not know either due to the fact I can in no way get into it due to the fact of the password.”

Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler argues that justices’ “narrow analogies will systematically fail to protect the values they did 5 or 10 years ago, specifically when we’re walking all around with all the metadata coming out … our pockets.” Privacy advocate Trevor Timm argues the case is “the tip of the iceberg”.

Tv on the Web

Broadcasters are fighting Net startup Aereo’s practice of taking television programming for totally free and providing it to subscribers who can then view on smartphones and other transportable units. Backed by the US government and organizations like the NFL, ABC, CBS, Fox and PBS accuse Aereo of blatant theft. Referring to the company’s organization description, Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained: “I go through it and say: ‘Why are not they a cable company?’” The case has main implications for streaming, cloud-based data storage and on-line programming.

Corporations’ religious rights and contraceptives

Companies are claiming the right to workout religious objections to covering women’s contraceptives beneath their employee well being insurance strategies, regardless of the new well being law’s necessity that birth handle be between a range of no-price preventive companies integrated in wellness plans. Reduce courts have been split on an issue “central to the situation, [of] regardless of whether for-revenue companies have a right to exercising religious freedoms beneath both the first amendment’s totally free physical exercise clause, or under a federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Guardian’s Karen McVeigh notes.

Abortion clinic buffer zones

Abortion opponents are challenging as a violation of their speech rights a Massachusetts law mandating a 35-foot protest-free of charge zone on public sidewalks outdoors abortion clinics. In 2000, court upheld a buffer zone decision in Colorado, but this case hinges on the justices’ balance of “free of charge speech rights versus the state’s duty to protest public safety against many years of intimidation and harassment from protesters”.

Recess presidential appointments

A federal appeals court explained President Barack Obama misused the Constitution’s recess power when he temporarily filled positions on the Nationwide Labor Relations Board in 2012. The Guardian mentioned that “most of the 9 supreme court justices who heard argument in a test situation on Monday appeared to take a dim view of the government’s position.” Justice Elena Kagan said: “This is not the horse and buggy era. There is no this kind of factor as congressional absence right here. What we are dealing with [the recess electrical power] is a historical relic.”

Greenhouse gases

Industry groups and 13 states, like Texas, assert that environmental regulators overstepped their bounds by striving to apply a provision of the Clean Air Act to control emissions of greenhouse gases from electrical power plants and factories. This case is unlikely to impact the current proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency to slash carbon dioxide emissions from energy plants by practically one-third by 2030 that program involves a distinct component of the identical law. Key justice Anthony Kennedy appeared to lean toward government’s situation, and the justices as a group did not appear inclined to hear disputes of climate science.

Union fees

Property healthcare workers in Illinois want the court to rule that public sector unions can’t acquire charges from workers who object to currently being affiliated with a union.

Securities fraud

Investors could find it harder to carry class-action lawsuits more than securities fraud at publicly traded companies in a case involving Halliburton Co, a provider of power, oil and infrastructure companies.

Supreme court situations ahead: cellphones, contraception and world wide web Television

Twenty Years In the past These days, The California Supreme Court Upheld Mandatory Drug Testing In University Sports activities

Twenty many years in the past nowadays, the California Supreme Court ruled in Hill v. NCAA that the NCAA’s necessary drug testing program complied with the privacy requirements in the California state constitution.

This selection reversed a lower court ruling that forbid the NCAA from requiring pupil-athletes at California schools from submitting to mandatory drug testing.

The original challenge to the NCAA’s drug testing plan was filed in 1990 by a linebacker on the Stanford football staff and the co-captain of the Stanford women’s soccer crew.  The two student-athletes argued that the NCAA drug testing demands violated Report I, Segment one of the California Constitution, which granted all California citizens a constitutional proper to privacy.

Stanford University in the end intervened in the Hill litigation on behalf of its pupil-athletes.

Stanford University in the long run intervened in the situation and argued on behalf of its student-athletes’ rights.  And each the California Superior Court and the California Court of Appeal agreed with their position — discovering the NCAA drug testing system illegal underneath California state law.

However, when the California Supreme Court reviewed the situation, it reached the opposite conclusion.

In accordance to the California Supreme Court, pupil-athletes have a diminished expectation of privacy because they already “undergo frequent physical examinations, reveal their body and health care situations to coaches and trainers, and often dress and undress in same-intercourse locker rooms.”

The court also concluded that the NCAA has ”legitimate regulatory objectives in conducting testing for proscribed drugs,” which are based on the two student-athlete security and sustaining the sanctity of college competition.

Nowadays, the NCAA continues to enforce its rigid drug testing protocol even although several facets of the NCAA’s arguments Hill seem to be to conflict with the NCAA’s a lot more recent legal positions.

Most notably, in Hill, the NCAA argued a special duty in “protecting the wellness and security of student athletes.”  By contrast, in a latest wrongful death litigation stemming from a university football player’s repeated concussions, the NCAA denied any legal duty to protect the well being and safety of student-athletes.

________________________________

Marc Edelman is an Associate Professor of Law at the City University of New York‘s Baruch School, Zicklin College of Company, exactly where he has published more than 25 law review “articles on sports law matters, such as “A Brief Treatise on Amateurism and Antitrust Law” and “The Long term of Amateurism following Antitrust Scrutiny.”

Comply with me on Twitter right here

Twenty Years In the past These days, The California Supreme Court Upheld Mandatory Drug Testing In University Sports activities