AbbVie Fights Mississippi Drug Discount Law at Fifth Circuit

AbbVie Inc. appeared to find a sympathetic listener as it urged a three-judge panel Wednesday to block a Mississippi statute that requires manufacturers to steeply discount medicines to an unlimited number of pharmacies that are under a federal drug discount program.

Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod pressed Mississippi’s solicitor general, Scott G. Stewart, over the constitutionality of the state law (H.B.728) in a hearing before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The judge lobbed a string of questions at Stewart over whether the law amounted to a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, which bars ...