Late Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling that “sovereign immunity” protects the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from any wrongdoing or harm in telling the public to stop taking ivermectin, a safe, well-studied, and proven drug for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.
In their opinion, Judges Clement, Elrod, and Willett state, “The FDA argues that the Twitter posts are ‘informational statements’ that cannot qualify as rules because they ‘do not ‘direct’ consumers, or anyone else, to do or refrain from doing anything.’ We are not convinced.”
The lawsuit, Apter et al v. Dep’t. of Health and Human Services et al, was brought by Robert Apter, MD, Mary Talley Bowden, MD and FLCCC co-founder, Paul E. Marik, MD and first filed in the U.S. District Court on June 2, 2022. The case—which stated that the FDA acted outside of its authority and illegally interfered with the doctors’ ability to practice medicine with an aggressive effort to stop the prescribing of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 — was later dismissed by the court citing that the FDA had “sovereign immunity.”
The Court’s reversal yesterday was issued with the ruling, which said “FDA is not a physician. It has authority to inform, announce, and apprise—but not to endorse, denounce, or advise.”
“We are very pleased with this development and extremely proud of our colleagues for taking a stand against a government health agency that is clearly overstepping its authority,” said Pierre Kory, M.D., M.P.A., president and chief medical officer of the FLCCC. “The FDA’s campaign against ivermectin continues to be used as an excuse by hospitals to deny access to a lifesaving treatment and weaponized by medical boards to threaten the licenses of doctors who stray from the mainstream to prescribe a drug that has been proven in controlled trials to safely treat hundreds of thousands of patients around the world.”
The lawsuit was dismissed in December by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown, who ruled that the complaints didn’t overcome the FDA’s “sovereign immunity,” a concept that protects government entities from many civil lawsuits regarding their responsibilities. The appellate panel said the FDA’s alleged overstepping of its authority opened the door for the lawsuit.
Read the FLCCC’s full statement HERE.
Watch Dr. Mobeen Syed’s review of the main points in the judges’ decision HERE.
The Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling can be found HERE.
The FLCCC filed its amicus brief in support of the lawsuit in February of this year. A copy of the brief can be found HERE.
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