Richard Samp of the Washington Legal Foundation reports that DC-based U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has chosen to look the other way in the face of compelling evidence that Federal Trade Commission lawyers are using a sham investigation to extort a pharmaceutical company. Samp describes the judge’s “remarkably deferential” opinion upholding an FTC demand to subpoena the pharmaceutical company’s CEO. He adds that unless this decision is overturned on appeal, the FTC will “embolden” future abuses of power. Of course, Samp identifies the root of the problem:
District of Columbia-based judges applying a body of case-law created to consistently give federal agencies a robust benefit of the doubt cannot effectively restrain federal official’s abuse of their vast authority and discretion. Rulings such as Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s send a rather clear signal to federal regulators and prosecutors: do what you need to do to advance your agendas aimed at restricting economic conduct. We’ve got your back.
UPDATE: To further prove Samp’s point — and show the breadth of the FTC’s disdain for all market participants — I just learned that last week the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld another FTC order against the Christian organization Daniel Chapter One. The FTC prohibited the group from making religious-based statements about the medicinal value of herbal and other natural supplements. The FTC said customers could only receive FDA-approved statements. The D.C. Circuit issued only a brief, unsigned opinion affirming the FTC’s supremacy over the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses.
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Your ire and defense are misplaced. It is not, entirely not, disrespect of the establishment and free exercise clauses that leads to this decision. To permit the religious to make non-FDA claims for their supplements/vitamins/whathaveyou would grant religion a special exemption from the rules everyone else has to follow, in violation of the very clauses you seek to see upheld. Or have you never read all the fine print on a bottle of vitamins?
The crime against humanity is that only one agency is permitted to make health claims and all other must defer, not that the religious specifically must defer. There are already far too many governmental deferences to religion, the last thing we need is one more. Let’s clear out the underbrush and impediments for all. (E.g., either tax the churches and religious orders and members thereof or tax none of us.)
no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott
Shirely,
I am curious about something. The issue of claims, religious or otherwise, for food suppliments is an interesting situation. It is my understanding that claims of benefit do not have to be substantiated in the case of food suppliments, as opposed to medicines which much pass FDA-approved efficacy and safety tests.
Although as a practical matter, this testing is often carried out by the manufacturers themselves, I am wondering if my understanding of the distinction the FDA makes between drugs and food suppliments is correct.
If so, what is the distinction you are making between those claims based on religion, and any other claim that is not verified through FDA testing? If the FDA has not required testing, then how is it they are justified in weighing in, one way or the other?
I’m pretty sure you are misinterpreting the author here. He used the word “religious-based” because the statements were based on religion. He never said that being religious-based is what makes the statements OK.
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