CJ court watch two cases 13jun24
SCt two cases unanimously today, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U. S. __ (2024) and Vidal v. Elster, 602 U. S. __ (2024). Alliance is about constitutional litigation and separation of powers. Vidal is about free speech.
Mifepristone is a drug designed to cause abortion. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued the FDA to prevent mifepristone from being sold without an in-person meeting between the woman and a doctor.
SCt held that the Alliance didn't have standing. It wasn't personally injured by any action or inaction of FDA.
The threshold question is whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution. Article III standing is a “bedrock constitutional requirement that this Court has applied to all manner of important disputes.”***
Article III of the Constitution confines the jurisdiction of federal courts to “Cases” and “Controversies.” The case or controversy requirement limits the role of the Federal Judiciary in our system of separated powers. As this Court explained to President George Washington in 1793 in response to his request for a legal opinion, federal courts do not issue advisory opinions about the law—even when requested by the President. 13 Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series 392 (C. Patrick ed. 2007). Nor do federal courts operate as an open forum for citizens “to press general complaints about the way in which government goes about its business.”***
As Justice Scalia memorably said, Article III requires a plaintiff to first answer a basic question: “‘What’s it to you?’” A. Scalia, The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers, 17 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 881, 882 (1983). For a plaintiff to get in the federal courthouse door and obtain a judicial determination of what the governing law is, the plaintiff cannot be a mere bystander, but instead must have a “personal stake” in the dispute. TransUnion, 594 U. S., at 423. The requirement that the plaintiff possess a personal stake helps ensure that courts decide litigants’ legal rights in specific cases, as Article III requires, and that courts do not opine on legal issues in response to citizens who might “roam the country in search of governmental wrongdoing.”***
The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone. But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justiciable case or controversy in federal court. Here, the plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that FDA’s relaxed regulatory requirements likely would cause them to suffer an injury in fact. For that reason, the federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions. The plaintiffs may present their concerns and objections to the President and FDA in the regulatory process, or to Congress and the President in the legislative process. And they may also express their views about abortion and mifepristone to fellow citizens, including in the political and electoral processes****
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Steve Elster sought to register the trademark “Trump too small.” But, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) refused to register the mark because the Lanham Act prohibits registration of a trademark that “[c]onsists of or comprises a name . . . identifying a particular living individual except by his written consent.” 60 Stat. 428, 15 U. S. C. §1052(c). Elster contends that this prohibition violates his First Amendment right to free speech. We hold that it does not.***
Only marks that meet certain criteria are federally registerable. Among other criteria, the Lanham Act contains what we will call the “names clause”—a prohibition on the registration of a mark that “[c]onsists of or comprises a name . . . identifying a particular living individual except by his written consent.” §1052(c). The names clause excludes from registration “not only full names but also surnames, shortened names, and nicknames, so long as the name does in fact identify a particular living individual.”***
Elster sued when PTO refused to register his mark. The 1st Cir. said he had a point. SCt begged to differ.
A content-based regulation “target[s] speech based on its communicative content,” restricting discussion of a subject matter or topic. Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U. S. 155, 163 (2015). “As a general matter,” a content-based regulation is “‘presumptively unconstitutional and may be justified only if the government proves that [it is] narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.’”***
The names clause does not facially discriminate against any viewpoint. No matter the message a registrant wants to convey, the names clause prohibits marks that use another person’s name without consent. It does not matter “whether the use of [the] name is flattering, critical or neutral.”***
We conclude that a tradition of restricting the trademarking of names has coexisted with the First Amendment, and the names clause fits within that tradition. Though the particulars of the doctrine have shifted over time, the consistent through line is that a person generally had a claim only to his own name. The names clause reflects this common-law tradition by prohibiting a person from obtaining a trademark of another living person’s name without consent, thereby protecting the other’s reputation and goodwill.4***
Rather than adopt a reasonableness test premised upon loose analogies, however, we conclude that the names clause is grounded in a historical tradition sufficient to demonstrate that it does not run afoul of the First Amendment.***
SCt reversed the 1st Cir., and Elster will have to live without a trademark in someone else's name.
The nice thing about America is that Elster can still sell t-shirts that say "Trump too small," and he can keep all the profits he can make from the shirts; he just can't trademark the shirts.
