Top Takeaways:

• The Iowa Department of Revenue is appealing a federal injunction that barred enforcement of House File 2677, which imposed vape product compliance rules.
• A federal judge blocked the law’s directory and enforcement provisions, finding they conflict with FDA’s exclusive premarket authority under the FDCA.
• Iowa’s law conditionally punishes sale of unauthorized vaping products, but plaintiffs argue it improperly mirrors federal requirements and distorts regulatory boundaries.

Iowa’s Department of Revenue has taken its fight over House File 2677 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, urging judges to reverse a federal injunction that currently bars enforcement of the state’s new vape product registry law.

HF 2677, signed into law in May 2024, directed the state to enforce penalties against manufacturers and sellers of vaping products not authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The law also required nonresident vapor product companies to appoint an agent for service of process in Iowa.

Manufacturers were to certify that their products either received FDA marketing authorization or were on the market by August 8, 2016, with a premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) filed by September 9, 2020. Failure to comply with the state’s registry would render products illegal to sell in Iowa.

Plaintiffs—including industry groups like Iowans for Alternatives to Smoking & Tobacco and several vape retailers and manufacturers—filed suit, asserting HF 2677 violates the Supremacy Clause by imposing state-level enforcement of FDA federal premarket standards. They also raised equal protection concerns over disparate treatment of tobacco-derived versus synthetic nicotine products.

On May 2, 2025, U.S. District Judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Revenue from enforcing HF 2677’s vapor product directory provisions. The judge ruled that the law “effectively allows Iowa to bring enforcement actions… based on compliance with the [Tobacco Control Act’s] PMTA process—a federal requirement that Congress entrusted exclusively to FDA enforcement.” The court emphasized that while states can regulate tobacco sales, they cannot substitute FDA’s enforcement discretion.

Judge Rose agreed that HF 2677 is impliedly preempted under the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act (FDCA), stating: “By conditioning market access on FDA authorization status, Iowa interferes with ‘the methods by which the federal statute was designed to reach [its] goal.’”

The ruling allowed the state to continue enforcing only the agent-of-service provisions for out-of-state manufacturers. Iowa filed a notice of appeal later in May, seeking reversal of the injunction’s broader scope.

Despite the injunction, the Department questioned plaintiffs’ standing, arguing that blocking HF 2677 would deprive Iowans of legal recourse for harms caused by unregulated e-cigarette products—a position the district court rejected.

The appeal is now pending in the Eighth Circuit. Iowa urges the appellate court to allow enforcement of HF 2677, asserting its statutory provisions fall within the state’s police powers to regulate retail tobacco product sales.