Justia U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs opposed the use of vaccines that contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, and believed that vaccines containing mercury harm young children and pregnant women. Plaintiffs filed an action alleging that the FDA, by allowing thimerosal-preserved vaccines, violated its statutory duty to ensure the safety of vaccines. Plaintiffs asked for a court order requiring the FDA to prohibit the administration of vaccines containing more than a trace level of thimerosal to young children and pregnant women and sought to force the FDA to remove thimerosal-preserved vaccines from the market. The district court dismissed the suit for lack of standing. The court concluded that plaintiffs were not required to receive thimerosal-preserved vaccines; they could readily obtain thimerosal-free vaccines; they did not have standing to challenge the FDA's decision to allow other people to receive the vaccines; and plaintiffs could advocate that the Legislative and Executive Branches ban the vaccines. But because plaintiffs were suffering no cognizable injury as a result of the FDA's decision to allow the vaccine, their lawsuit was not a proper subject for the Judiciary. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs, et al. v. Sebelius, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, two scientists, brought a suit to enjoin the National Institutes of Health ("NIH") from funding research using human embryonic stem cells ("ESCs") pursuant to the NIH's 2009 Guidelines ("Guidelines"). At issue was whether the preliminary injunction was properly granted where the district court concluded that plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that the Guidelines violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, an appropriations rider that barred federal funding for research in which a human embryo was destroyed. The court vacated the preliminary injunction and held that plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker was ambiguous and the NIH seemed reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker barred funding for the destructive act of deriving an ESC from an embryo, it did not prohibit funding a research project in which an ESC would be used.