The cigarette giant has filed a lawsuit over government requirements to feature large graphic warnings on cigarette packs by 2021, reports Bloomberg.

The FDA had announced that cigarette companies would have to feature one of eleven images showing the potential health risks of smoking in the future. Philip Morris USA Inc. says that the new implementations which would see half of the exterior of cigarette packs covered with the shocking images, which include premature babies and amputated toes, violate First Amendment free-speech rights.
“Plaintiffs know of no other government-mandated disclosure regime that has ever attempted to seize so much speech, let alone to seize the most prominent and visible locations on packaging and advertising for the government’s messages,” Philip Morris states in its complaint, according to Bloomberg.
Philip Morris is citing an earlier lawsuit from 2013 in which FDA plans to implement graphic warnings were ruled out. Back then, the appeals court found that the graphic warnings violated the First Amendments rights of the tobacco companies by making them “disparage their own products with shocking and inflammatory graphic images.”
According to Bloomberg, the FDA has declined to comment on the lawsuit.