(June 29)
At least one of the three lawsuits that Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has filed against the CVS drugstore chain is not just wrongheaded but constitutionally dangerous. She should withdraw it, forthwith.
Murrill is particularly angry with CVS for successfully convincing the state Legislature to reject a bill that would have prohibited companies from owning drugstores while also owning outfits called “pharmacy benefit managers.” PBMs serve essentially as middlemen to negotiate drug prices from manufacturers.
I take no position on whether PBMs are more beneficial than harmful — except to note that plenty of conservative-free-market advocates are supporters of PBMs, so it’s odd to see Murrill and some other Republicans oppose them. I also take no position on whether PBMs and drugstores should be owned by the same corporation, and no position on the merits of Murrill’s second and third lawsuits against CVS, which accuse the drugstore giant of “unfair competition” and (essentially) monopolistic practices.
Murrill’s first lawsuit, though, is outrageous. It seeks to punish CVS for contacting customers to express its political opposition to the legislation she favored. It says CVS “illegitimately” used customers’ “contact information obtained under the guise of prescription and health notifications” to send text messages that were “inaccurate, misleading, and deceptive” in order to “incite fear among vulnerable people regarding their medical needs.”
Murrill should read the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In case she forgot, that amendment guarantees the right to free speech. That right, as the Supreme Court repeatedly and emphatically has reminded us, is particularly strong in protecting speech of a political nature.
Among the cases that recognized that corporate speech is included under these protections was the famous Citizens United v. FEC, which conservatives such as Murrill tend not just to support but celebrate. (I know whereof I speak: I literally was one of the three other people in the room when Citizens United President David Bossie gave the go-ahead to his lawyer to file that lawsuit.)
In her public explanation of this suit and in the suit itself, Murrill explicitly notes that CVS’ messages were intended to “serve its own political agenda.” Well, of course: That’s the whole point of political speech protections…. [The full column by Quin is here.]
