Cigar Industry Asks for Emergency Temporary Restraining Order in California UTL Lawsuit

[El Presidente]

October 7, 2025 Charlie Minato

After not hearing back from the U.S. District Court on Monday, the cigar industry has asked for an emergency temporary restraining order (TRO) that would delay a key deadline for cigar makers to keep their products legal in California.

Jason Kim, who is listed as the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in Rocky Patel Premium Cigars, Inc., et al v. Bonta made the filing on Tuesday. The case, which was filed last Friday, has been assigned to Judge Monica Ramírez Almadani, a Biden appointee.

CONTINUED

https://halfwheel.com/cigar-industry-asks-for-emergency-temporary-restraining-order-in-california-utl/455175/

[smashed]

I'm really curious to see how this plays out. It could set a precedent.

[Duxnutz]

God speed Cali cigar brethren. 

[Cigar Surgeon]

Denied.

[Ford2112]

That's it, I'm moving.

[JohnS]

California Attorney General Asks Court to Dismiss Cigar Industry’s UTL Lawsuit

November 19, 2025 - Charlie Minato

For the attorneys involved in the legal battles over California’s Unflavored Tobacco List (UTL), it has been a busy week or so. In both state and federal court, the two sides—a group of companies and trade organizations representing the cigar industry, and on the other side, the California attorney general’s office—have filed various motions and responses regarding the UTL.

Here’s an update.

WHAT IS THE UTL?

The UTL is part of California’s law that bans the sale of most flavored tobacco and vaping products in the state. While the original flavored tobacco ban was passed in 2020, last year, the state passed a second law that called for the creation of a list of tobacco products that are legal for sale, i.e., an unflavored tobacco list.

Currently, the first version of the list is being created by the AG’s office, which is tasked with creating and carrying out the application and approval process. The first UTL must be published before the end of 2025, and come Jan. 1, 2026, any product not on the UTL—or otherwise exempt—will not be legal to sell in California. There is no formal—or legal—grace period for retailers to sell a cigar that is no longer on the UTL, however, the California Department of Justice has said that it doesn’t intend to immediately start issuing fines for products like handmade cigars and will focus on enforcement for products that are “obviously flavored.”

HOW DOES A PRODUCT GET ON THE UTL?

A company must submit its products for inclusion. An application involves some paperwork, where the company must list basic information about the product as well as other information, such as whether any other government agency has determined the product is flavored. In addition, a sample of the product must be sent to the AG’s office.

The initial registration fee is $300 and renewals will be, as of now, $150 per year.

In order to make sure a product could be included on the first UTL, companies needed to submit applications by Oct. 9. Going forward, the AG’s office says it will take up to 90 days to review applications.

WHAT IS EXEMPT?

Flavored shisha/hookah tobacco is exempt. In addition, the state of California defines a “premium cigar” as one that is handmade, made from whole leaf tobacco and has a wholesale price of at least $12. This definition of “premium cigar” does not exclude flavored cigars, so long as they meet the other requirements and do not have a tip or mouthpiece.

WHO SUED & WHY?

The lawsuit started with Cigar Rights of America, an industry trade group that is largely funded by roughly 10 family-owned cigar companies. The majority of those companies—Arturo Fuente, Ashton, La Flor Dominicana, Oliva, My Father, Padrón and Rocky Patel—are listed as plaintiffs, as is the CRA, and the Premium Cigar Association, another trade group.

They sued, arguing the law was illegal for a variety of reasons. The plaintiffs have filed for restraining orders and injunctions that would prevent the attorney general’s office from enforcing the regulations for “premium cigars,” but they don’t use the same definition of “premium cigar” as the state of California. Instead, they are relying on the working definition that was developed out of two completely different lawsuits; that definition says that a “premium cigar” must be handmade, made from only tobacco, have a whole leaf wrapper and cannot be flavored. The plaintiffs’ definition does not have a price requirement.

Who is Winning?

The AG’s office has succesfully argued against emergency temporary restraining orders and already caused the platiniffs to have to file a second lawsuit in a different court. It’s early, but I’m unsure what court room victories the plaintiffs can claim. Both the CRA and PCA have made claims that this lawsuit(s) have led to some changes in how the AG’s office will enforce the UTL, I disagree that those can be attributed to the lawsuit. Regardless, it’s early but I don’t think there’s been a lot of winning for the cigar industry.

Lawsuit #1 — Federal Court

The first lawsuit was filed on Oct. 3 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. It has since been amended—more on that below—and now includes a First Amendment challenge, violations of the Import-Export clause, and preemption.

On Monday, Nov. 17, the plaintiffs filed a motion seeking an injunction that would prevent the AG’s office from carrying out the regulations for “premium cigars” using their preferred definition. A day later, the AG’s office filed a motion to dismiss the case. That motion, embedded above, starts by asking the court to throw out the entire lawsuit because, according to the AG’s office, the lawsuit is based on “prospective relief,” but the legal mechanism the plaintiffs are relying on applies to “retroactive relief.”

The AG’s office quickly works through the free speech claims—the plaintiffs argue that they won’t be able to use common tasting note descriptors without running a risk of getting rejected from the UTL—and the Import-Export concerns—the plaintiffs argue that the licensing requirements and fees are violations of part of the Commerce Clause.

In a perhaps telling sign, half of the 21-page document—and well more than half the substantive legal writing—is spent replying to claims that California’s UTL scheme is preempted by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a federal law. The Tobacco Control Act was passed with language that prevents states from passing some tobacco laws that would conflict with federal law, such as product approval.

This economy of words is notable because the preemption claims were not a large part of the plaintiffs’ complaint. It’s unclear if the AG’s office was more prepared for a preemption challenge because it’s been a common claim from vape companies in other states or because it has greater concerns over its chances of succeeding compared to the other claims.

Lawsuit #2 — State Court

Originally, the federal lawsuit also included a claim that the UTL violates California’s Administrative Procedures Act. The AG’s office replied that the Eleventh Amendment prevented the plaintiffs from making APA claims in federal court and that those claims needed to be made in state court. A judge agreed, so now there is a lawsuit in state court over those claims.

Last week, the AG’s office replied, above, to a motion to a request for an injunction from the state court. In it, the different definitions of “premium cigar” play a role, with the AG’s office arguing that the state legislature created California’s definition of “premium cigar” and provided the exemptions to the law, not the AG’s office nor its UTL.

It also pokes fun at the plaintiffs’ claims that the costs associated with the UTL are crippling by pointing out that the original complaint from the plaintiffs boasted about how premium cigars are enjoyed all over the world and the plaintiffs are “the most renowned artisans of premium cigars in the world.”

Source: https://halfwheel.com/california-ag-asks-court-to-dismiss-cigar-industrys-utl-lawsuit/457022/

[ha_banos]

Sure is a lawyers paradise.

[JohnS]

Federal Court Denies Preliminary Injunction Request in California UTL Case

December 24, 2025 - Charlie Minato

The cigar industry has once again lost a legal battle as part of its lawsuit(s) against California’s Unflavored Tobacco List (UTL) law, an actual list that will show the products the state has determined are not flavored and legal to sell in California.

Yesterday, Judge Monica Ramírez Almadani of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction in Rocky Patel Premium Cigars Inc. et al v. Bonta.

The case was filed in October, ahead of the state’s UTL deadlines, by seven family-owned cigar companies that are board members of the Cigar Rights of America (CRA), the CRA itself and the Premium Cigar Association. They are challenging the UTL’s rules as they apply to “premium cigars,” which more or less started less than a week after the federal lawsuit was filed. Ramírez Almadani quickly tossed one part of the lawsuit, finding that challenges under the California Administrative Procedures Act needed to be made in state court, not federal court. A second lawsuit was filed in state court to deal with those claims.

Tuesday’s decision dealt with a request for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the state from applying the UTL rules to “premium cigars” as this lawsuit plays out. Before the end of the year, the state must publish the initial version of the UTL, an actual list that will tell California’s retailers which products are legal to sell. Come Jan. 1, 2026, any product not on the list will not be legal to sell.

Companies had until Oct. 9 to ensure that they made the initial list. Going forward, companies can apply for more products to make the list and the attorney general’s office—which the legislature put in charge of the UTL—says it will process those applications within 90 days. While not an extensive survey, multiple companies have told halfwheel they have received approval for all of the products they submitted.

Last week, Ramírez Almadani heard oral arguments for the request for a preliminary injunction, which requires her to evaluate how likely the plaintiffs are to succeed on the merits of the underlying claims. She evaluated three different claims—express preemption, implied preemption, and free speech—and found that the plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on any of them, which led her to deny the request for a preliminary injunction.

Both preemption issues deal with how the UTL law interacts with the Tobacco Control Act, a federal law in which Congress directed the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco products. Much of the discussion surrounding the express preemption relies on R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. County of Los Angeles, a 2022 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In its most basic form, the plaintiffs are arguing that the UTL is a form of premarket review, i.e., regulating the manufacturing, whereas the state argues that it is a restriction on the sale. Ramírez Almadani finds the state’s arguments persuasive and says that the UTL is a regulation on finished products and not their production.

The implied preemption arguments deal with language in the Tobacco Control Act that prevents states from enacting certain types of tobacco regulation on their own. This language has become a point of contention recently because of vape registry laws, state laws pushed by Big Tobacco that say if a product has not been approved by the FDA, it cannot be sold in a specific state. There are four different vape registry cases mentioned in this section.

Unfortunately for the cigar industry, Ramírez Almadani does not buy the plaintiffs’ arguments here either. According to the court, they argued that “a significant portion of the UTL scheme depends on a product’s status with regard to federal premarket review, and the state does not have authority to impose penalties based on violations of federal law.” This is in reference to California requiring companies to disclose any decision that the FDA has made about a product that applies for UTL inclusion. In doing so, the plaintiffs argue that California has created a parallel regulatory system, albeit one that is tied to federal enforcement.

The aforementioned four vaping-related cases have not had consistent rulings, though the courts upheld the state law in three of the cases. Here, Ramírez Almadani says the plaintiffs failed to identify how the UTL law would result in California enforcing federal law.

Finally, the plaintiffs argue that the state has restricted their free speech because cigar companies will no longer use common taste descriptors, like “this cigar has notes of wood, caramel and coffee” because those descriptions could be confused with affirmatively stating that the cigar has charachterizing flavors of wood, caramel and coffee, which would result in a cigar being excluded from the UTL.

While the Ramírez Almadani rejected some of the state’s defense against the free speech challenge, she did not find that the law actually would ban a company from making those statements, writing bluntly, “Plaintiffs may continue to describe the flavor of their premium cigars using flavorful terms, so long as they identify those ‘flavorful’ cigars as in fact being unflavored—and therefore not subject to the State’s ban on flavored tobacco products.”

Yesterday’s ruling does not mean the end of the case, though now that the deadlines are starting to pass, it will be especially interesting to see how committed the plaintiffs will be to funding the case further.

However, the same day as the court’s ruling, they immediately filed a notice stating they will appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit.

Source: https://halfwheel.com/federal-court-denies-preliminary-injunction-request-in-california-utl-case/459313/