Federal judge tosses Chamber of Commerce challenge to IRA’s Drug Price Negotiation Program
Federal judge tosses Chamber of Commerce challenge to IRA’s Drug Price Negotiation Program
A federal court on Thursday dismissed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s lawsuit against the Inflation Reduction Act’s Drug Price Negotiation Program, handing the pharma industry and its supporters another loss in their legal challenge to the Biden administration.
Judge Michael Newman, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, wrote in his opinion that the Chamber of Commerce—alongside its co-plaintiffs, the respective Chambers in Ohio, Dayton Area and Michigan—“do not have standing to sue in their own right.” Newman dismissed the case on the grounds of improper venue.
Over the past year, the pharma industry has filed several lawsuits seeking to block the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. The allegations are broadly similar—that the program violates their constitutional rights, represents an unlawful taking of their products and breaches due process—but the cases have been filed in many different courts.
Legal experts have described this as a divide-and-conquer strategy by the drugmakers and their allied trade groups, which are looking to secure conflicting verdicts and opinions in lower courts with the goal of attracting the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in and resolve the matter.
However, Newman appears to have seen through this tactic and refused to play into it. In his Thursday opinion, he called out the pharma industry which has “attempted to manipulate the system and manufacture standing to obtain a favorable venue.”
If his court had found that the plaintiffs had standing in this case, “it would open the door for any individual or company to bypass venue rules by becoming a member of any association remotely related to a challenged law or regulation,” Newman wrote. “The Court will not adopt a loose interpretation of the standing requirement for the purpose of forum shopping.”
