District

• The FTC sued Noland (also known as Jay Noland, J.D.
• Noland, and J. Noland), his wife Lina Noland, Scott Harris, and Thomas Sacca, in connection with SBH in January 2020 and added charges related to VOZ Travel in September 2020.
• In its ruling, the court cited the “sheer volume of deceptive tactics and statements associated with” both SBH and VOZ Travel.
• Any amount recovered by the FTC will be used to redress consumers.
• The court also found that the defendants committed multiple “acts of dishonesty,” including “destroying evidence, violating court orders, giving false under-oath testimony, and taking no accountability for the misconduct after being caught.”

• “We will vigorously enforce the Health Breach Notification Rule to defend consumer's health data from exploitation.
• As part of a proposed order filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC, Illinois-based Easy Healthcare Corporation, which operates the Premom app, would be barred from sharing users’ personal health data with third parties for advertising, required to obtain users’ consent before sharing health data for any other purpose, and must tell consumers how their personal data will be used.
• Premom failed to fully disclose its data sharing practices, and also violated direct promises to users, the FTC says.
• An SDK tracks a user’s interactions with an app and other identifiable information and shares that data with third parties.
• The FTC also says Premom integrated SDKs from other third parties into the Premom app including from app analytics provider Umeng and analytics provider Jiguang and shared sensitive user data.

• The Commission voted 3-0 to refer the complaint and stipulated final order to the Department of Justice for filing.
• The DOJ filed the complaint and stipulated order in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

• The U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling on April 21, 2023, that allows continued access to the abortion pill mifepristone in states where abortion is legal.
• On April 7, two federal district court judges halfway across the country from each other issued conflicting rulings about the validity of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone.
• Within a week, yet another court issued a third opinion, which allowed mifepristone to continue to be prescribed, but under more limited circumstances.

The federal system

• It’s first useful to understand how the federal court system in the U.S. works.
• State-run court systems are entirely separate from the federal judicial system, which is where the mifepristone rulings are playing out.
• Federal courts handle a variety of issues, including those relating to the United States government, the Constitution or federal laws, or controversies between states or between the U.S. government and foreign governments.
• There are 94 federal district courts, organized into 12 regional circuits.

Other examples

• There are many other examples where federal circuit courts disagree.
• In 2018, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, ruled that an Indiana state law that banned abortions based on genetic anomalies was not constitutional.
• But in 2021, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Ohio law banning abortions based on one kind of genetic anomaly, Down syndrome.

The case of mifepristone

• With this latest example of courts butting heads, Federal District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas ruled first, on April 7.
• His decision took the form of a preliminary injunction, which is essentially a temporary ruling, until the court has a chance to go through a full trial.
• Kacsmaryk concluded that the FDA had exceeded its authority in approving mifepristone in 2000 and in loosening the prescribing restrictions over the years.

Where the issues stand

• But that decision is only in effect while the case is being decided by the 5th Circuit.
• And the situation gets even more complicated, with a third lawsuit filed in a federal court in Maryland on April 19.
• That case was brought by GenBioPro, the manufacturer of a generic version of mifepristone, which the FDA approved in 2019.