Reuters reports that US District Judge Indira Talwani ruled the FDA “has unreasonably delayed putting out a congressionally-mandated final rule requiring graphic health warnings on cigarette packs and in advertising.” As such, the federal judge “ordered the FDA to propose by Sept. 26 an expedited schedule by which it could issue the much-delayed final rule.” Previously, the FDA “said it needed until 2021 to finalize it.”

The AP reports an agency spokesman says the FDA is working “to move forward on the work to support a new rulemaking.” Additionally, the spokesman “says the FDA is analyzing the judge’s decision and will comply with the court.”

The Boston Globe reports that the judge’s “decision came in a lawsuit filed in October 2016 in Boston by eight groups representing pediatricians, cancer and heart specialists, and antitobacco activists, along with three Massachusetts pediatricians,” requesting that “the court…order the FDA to comply with the 2009 law.” Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids praised the decision, describing it a “major victory in the fight against tobacco use, the nation’s number one cause of preventable death.”

MedPage Today reports that Talwani “ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, and six other public health and medical groups contending that the FDA had ‘unreasonably delayed’ and ‘unlawfully withheld’ the final rule on graphic labels, which were originally mandated close to a decade ago.”

AAP News says the decision “is a victory for the Academy and other health groups that filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2016, asking that warnings be implemented.”

From the news release of the American Association for Justice.