Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers v. Weiser

The federal district court for the District of Colorado granted trade associations’ motion for a preliminary injunction barring the Colorado Attorney General from implementing or enforcing a Colorado law that established requirements for disseminating certain information about air quality and health impacts of indoor gas stoves on stove labels and on internet sites where gas-fueled stoves are sold. The court concluded that the plaintiffs had a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their First Amendment claim. The court first concluded that the labeling requirement regulated commercial speech. (The court rejected intervenor defendant Physicians for Social Responsibility Colorado’s argument that the labeling requirement was government speech not subject to the First Amendment.) The court further found that the labeling requirement was “objectively controversial because there is robust disagreement by scientific sources concerning the validity of the statements” about health outcomes contained on the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment webpage to which the labels were required to refer people. Because the court found the requirement to be objectively controversial, the court applied strict scrutiny rather than the “less exacting scrutiny” of Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio. Although the court was not persuaded by the trade associations’ contention that the Colorado law’s public health rationale was pretextual and that the true rationale for the rule was to discourage people from using gas-fueled stoves for climate change reasons, the court found that the Attorney General “does not present any conclusive evidence regarding the potential health effects of using gas-fueled stoves” and therefore did not identify “an actual concrete problem” that would establish a compelling government interest. In addition, the court found that the labeling requirement was not narrowly tailored. Because the labeling requirement failed the strict scrutiny test and the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their First Amendment claim, the court also found that the trade associations satisfied the irreparable harm and public interest factors of the preliminary injunction test.