Court Ruling Shows Limits on FDA Authority to Regulate Medical Devices

On July 6, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a 2-1 opinion in Judge Rotenberg Education Center v. FDA that overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ban on the use of electric shock medical devices for particular purposes because the FDA is prohibited from regulating the practice of medicine. The Judge Rotenberg Education Center (Center) is a facility in Massachusetts that treats patients with severe behavioral conditions and intellectual disabilities. The Center manufactures its own electric stimulation device, known as a graduated electronic decelerator, and is the only facility in the country that uses electric shock therapy to treat individuals who severely self-injure or are aggressive. The Center admits patients that other facilities could not successfully treat, and is seen by some as a last resort for patients and their families.

The FDA first proposed to ban electric stimulation devices used to treat self-injurious or aggressive behaviors in April 2016, and a final rule banning such devices became effective in March 2020. Electrical stimulation devices are legally authorized for use in other medical settings, for example to prevent muscle atrophy and reduce muscle spasms in physical therapy patients. Thus, the key question that the Court addressed was whether the FDA has legal authority to ban an otherwise legal device from a particular use. The Court concluded that the FDA does not have such authority because a “use-specific” ban like the one at issue “interferes with a practitioner’s authority by restricting the available range of devices through regulatory action.” The Court further opined that “the FDA has no authority to choose what medical devices a practitioner should prescribe or administer or for which conditions.”

Section 360f of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (Act) grants the FDA authority to ban medical devices intended for human use when such devices present “substantial deception or an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury.” Section 396 of the Act prohibits the FDA from regulating the practice of medicine, specifically forbidding the agency from taking actions that “interfere with the authority of a health care practitioner to prescribe or administer any legally marketed device to a patient for any condition or disease within a legitimate health care practitioner-patient relationship.” Since electric shock stimulation devices are legally used in other settings, the FDA’s attempted use-specific ban does not render such devices as not legally marketed. As the Court stated, “any device that the FDA attempts to ban for one but not all uses will, accordingly, still be legally marketed.” Thus, the FDA only has the more comprehensive power to completely ban a medical device, but not the intermediate power to tailor a ban to only certain uses. The opinion underlines the limits of the FDA’s authority to regulate medical devices.

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