Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 236

529US1

Unit: $U36

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 120 (2000)

161

Breyer, J., dissenting

question at issue and precluded the FDA from regulating
tobacco products.

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*

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By no means do we question the seriousness of the prob-
lem that the FDA has sought to address. The agency has
amply demonstrated that tobacco use, particularly among
children and adolescents, poses perhaps the single most sig-
niﬁcant threat to public health in the United States. None-
theless, no matter how “important, conspicuous, and contro-
versial” the issue, and regardless of how likely the public is
to hold the Executive Branch politically accountable, post, at
190, an administrative agency’s power to regulate in the pub-
lic interest must always be grounded in a valid grant of au-
thority from Congress. And “ ‘[i]n our anxiety to effectuate
the congressional purpose of protecting the public, we must
take care not to extend the scope of the statute beyond the
point where Congress indicated it would stop.’ ” United
States v. Article of Drug . . . Bacto-Unidisk, 394 U. S. 784,
800 (1969) (quoting 62 Cases of Jam v. United States, 340
U. S. 593, 600 (1951)). Reading the FDCA as a whole, as
well as in conjunction with Congress’ subsequent tobacco-
speciﬁc legislation, it is plain that Congress has not given
the FDA the authority that it seeks to exercise here. For
these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit is afﬁrmed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice

Souter, and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the author-
ity to regulate “articles (other than food) intended to af-
fect the structure or any function of the body . . . .” Fed-
eral Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), 21 U. S. C.
§ 321(g)(1)(C). Unlike the majority, I believe that tobacco
products ﬁt within this statutory language.