United States

In December 2013, the Chicago City Council adopted an ordinance regulating the sale of flavored tobacco products near schools. Plaintiffs challenged the ordinance and sought declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging that the ordinance was preempted by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA), unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and both a violation of vested rights and improperly retroactive under the Due Process Clause of the Illinois Constitution. (The Court considered two cases brought separately by Independents Gas and Quick Pick, as the complaints and the briefing on the motions to dismiss were the same.) The District Court dismissed all three of these challenges, finding that the FSPTCA had not preempted the ordinance; that the ordinance was not unconstitutionally vague; that no vested right was involved; and that the ordinance did not apply retroactively. The Court dismissed the plaintiff's complaints with prejudice and entered judgment in defendant's favor in both cases.