Court Upholds Obama Rule Banning Vaping on Airplanes

The Hill covers a lawsuit filed by CEI against the Department of Transportation’s airplane vaping ban.

A federal appeals court Friday upheld an Obama administration regulation that bans the use of electronic cigarettes — or e-cigarettes — on commercial airplanes.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected arguments by a free-market group and an e-cigarette advocacy group that the Department of Transportation (DOT) exceeded its legal authority and used bad science to justify the 2016 rule.

Officials also cited studies about the health effects of second-hand tobacco vapor, studies that the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association said weren’t scientifically sound.

But by a 2-to-1 ruling, the D.C. court rejected those arguments, saying that the DOT acted reasonably and within the authority Congress gave.

In a statement following the ruling, Sam Kazman, general counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the court redefined “smoking” in a “dangerous” way.

“It allows the commonly-understood language of Congress’s 30-year old no-smoking statute to be stretched into a ban on e-cigarettes — even though e-cigarettes involve no combustion and produce no smoke,” he said.

Read the full article on The Hill.