Just before Labor Day, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sent shock waves through the public health community when it ruled that the Federal Drug Administration couldn’t require cigarette manufacturers to print graphic images and warnings on the effects of smoking on packaging because to do so violated the free speech rights of the tobacco industry. On the surface the case and the court’s opinion may appear to have nothing to do with abortion rights, but they do.

An unusually blunt ruling from two conservative federal judges, if applied at the Supreme Court level, would make virtually all regulation on businesses or financial firms unconstitutional. DC Circuit Court members David Sentelle (a Reagan appointee) and Janice Rogers Brown (an appointee of George W. Bush) wrote a concurring opinion in a case about regulation for the dairy industry, one that would rewrite several decades of legal history on the legislative powers of Congress.

Via Think Progress, a three-judge panel of the DC Appeals Court has put a stay on Judge Royce Lamberth’s preliminary injunction against all federally-funded stem cell research. This means that research will be allowed to continue while the court case makes its way through the process.