New York State is standing athwart medical progress yelling “STOP!” In a move straight from the pages of Atlas Shrugged, the state sued Forest Laboratories, the subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Actavis that makes the Alzheimer’s drug Namenda IR, to force the company to continue making the drug, which was being phased out in favor of the new Namenda XR (which, among other improvements, need only be taken once a day rather than twice—a not insignificant plus when dealing with Alzheimer’s patients!).

Why would New York’s attorney general want to interfere with medical progress and the development of a better drug that would improve the lives of potentially millions of Americans? Perhaps to reduce state drug costs—maybe the state feels that the marginal benefit from switching to XR isn’t worth the marginal cost—or to provide a competitive advantage to the generic pharmaceutical industry (under New York law, when a patent expires—as IR’s will in a few months—the remaining prescriptions automatically switch to generics).

The state’s claim relies on some very dubious antitrust law and seeks to force Forest Labs to keep producing and offering IR under the same “terms and conditions” as before XR came out. Not only would this keep patients using an older, inferior drug, it would effectively compel Forest to support its competitors’ business strategy. The generics were already set to benefit from the hundreds of millions of R&D dollars Forest Labs spent developing IR, but now they get free advertising too.

Maybe the state doesn’t like the incentives created by the interplay of patent and antitrust law and FDA regulations—drug companies constantly develop and promote new drugs that monetize new patents—but no possible legal reason justifies the injunction that the state sought, which a federal district court recently granted! Even worse, the injunction is breathtakingly vague; in responding to Forest Labs’ motion for clarification, the judge acknowledged the vagueness but didn’t change his order, wishing the company “good luck”!

Setting aside the policy and ethical considerations underlying New York’s maneuver, the injunction order is a legal travesty. Cato has thus filed a brief supporting Forest Labs before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. We argue that the order is impermissibly vague, that the doctrine of constitutional avoidance requires interpreting the order as not actually compelling Forest Labs to engage in speech that is protected by the First Amendment, and that to construe the order as actually imposing speech obligations would render the order unconstitutional.

The First Amendment does more than just limit the government’s power to prevent people from speaking, after all: it also prohibits the government from telling people—including companies—what they must say. That is especially the case when, as here, the speech being compelled goes against the speaker’s self-interest and sincerely held beliefs on how best to treat Alzheimer’s. If the district court below actually believes the injunction passes jurisprudential muster, well, “good luck.”

The Second Circuit will hear argument in New York v. Actavis later this month.

Cato legal associate Julio Colomba contributed to this blogpost.