Florida's attorney general sued Pfizer and its chief executive on Wednesday over how the company marketed its COVID-19 vaccine, filing a two-count complaint in state court in St. Lucie County, on Florida's east coast. The suit, filed by Attorney General James Uthmeier under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, names Pfizer Inc. and Albert Bourla, the company's chairman and chief executive, and it asks for an injunction, a declaration, attorney's fees, civil penalties of $10,000 for each violation, and $15,000 for each violation that harmed a senior citizen or a person with a disability.
The dollar figures in the prayer for relief are the least interesting part of the document. Read alongside the two suits that came before it, the complaint is a drafting exercise aimed at two defenses, and it says so out loud in its twenty-third paragraph.
The paragraph that reads like a reply to Texas
Paragraph 23 contains a set of disclaimers that no ordinary consumer protection complaint needs. The state says it brings the action exclusively under Florida law. It says no federal claims are being asserted and that any such claim is expressly disavowed and disclaimed. Then it names two federal provisions by number. The state says it is not bringing any claim relating to Pfizer's contract with the federal Defense Department or any act under color of such office, citing 28 U.S.C. 1442(a)(1), the federal officer removal statute. And it says it does not bring a claim for loss as that term is used in 42 U.S.C. 247d-6d(a)(1), which is the immunity provision of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act.
Those two citations are the two grounds on which Pfizer defeated Texas. A plaintiffs' lawyer does not usually write a paragraph conceding that two defenses exist. Uthmeier's office wrote one, which tells you where the fight is expected to be.
The disclaimer on removal is the weaker of the two, because removal under the federal officer statute turns on what the defendant can show about its own conduct, not on what the plaintiff pleads. When a case is removed on that basis, the state can move to send it back, and the defendant carries the burden of establishing a colorable federal defense and a causal connection between its acts and federal authority. A plaintiff who disclaims federal claims has not decided the question. It has framed the argument.
The disclaimer on the PREP Act is different, because that provision turns on what kind of claim the state is bringing, and the state controls that.
What the PREP Act covers, and what the word loss means in it
The statute gives covered persons immunity from suit and liability under federal and state law with respect to all claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the administration to or the use by an individual of a covered countermeasure, once the health secretary has issued a declaration covering that countermeasure. The secretary issued one for COVID-19 countermeasures in 2020. The next paragraph defines loss broadly: any type of loss, including death, physical, mental, or emotional injury, illness, disability, or condition, and fear of such an injury including any need for medical monitoring.
The section then builds out what follows from that immunity. The only exception is an exclusive federal cause of action for death or serious physical injury proximately caused by willful misconduct, which must be brought in federal court and requires a physician's affidavit and certified medical records at the pleading stage. There is no route through the PREP Act for a state enforcement action seeking penalties, and there is no textual carve-out for one either.
That is the whole argument, and it has two sides that both read the same sentence.
Pfizer's position, which its lawyer Kannon Shanmugam pressed to the Fifth Circuit, is that the phrase any type of loss is deliberately broad and that the statute uses arising out of and relating to to reach claims that are not themselves personal injury suits. On that reading, a state that says consumers were deprived of the information they needed to weigh the vaccine's risks and benefits is describing a loss, even though the state itself was not injured and seeks penalties rather than compensation. Shanmugam told the panel that the deprivation of information exposed consumers to health risks, and said he thought that qualifies as a loss by any measure.
Texas answered that a suit for loss means a suit that seeks compensation for injury, and that the state's action seeks civil penalties whose purpose is to punish and deter rather than to make anyone whole. That is the reading the state of Florida has now adopted in advance, by writing the disclaimer into paragraph 23 rather than waiting to argue it.
Where the Texas case stands
Texas filed first, in 2023, and lost at the trial level. Senior U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings dismissed the case on December 30, 2024, on three grounds stated in a two-page order: Pfizer was entitled to immunity under the PREP Act, the PREP Act and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act both preempted Texas's claims, and the alleged statements were not connected to any trade or commerce or any consumer transaction.
Texas appealed, and the Fifth Circuit heard argument on September 1, 2026, before Judges Edith Jones, Leslie Southwick, and Don Willett. The argument took a turn that neither side asked for. Pfizer had removed the case to federal court on federal officer grounds, and on appeal the panel raised whether that removal was proper at all. If it was not, Cummings would have lacked jurisdiction to dismiss the case, and the dismissal would fall without the court ever reaching the PREP Act. Southwick put it plainly, saying the court had seen the issue and that a party cannot concede jurisdiction.
On that question Pfizer leaned on the Supreme Court's decision this year in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, where a parish sued Chevron over coastal erosion and the Court held that the company's wartime contracts with the federal government were related closely enough to the conduct at issue to support removal. Shanmugam argued that Texas is attacking Pfizer's statements about a study the company needed to obtain emergency use authorization, and that without the authorization Pfizer could not have performed its federal contract. Jones noted that the Supreme Court distinguished Plaquemines from cases where government contracts did not support removal of suits alleging that companies misled the public. Shanmugam's answer was that in those cases the statements were distinct in time from the government work, while here the two are wrapped together.
The panel has not ruled. A decision that the removal was improper would revive the case and send it back to state court, where the merits would start over.
Kansas kept its case in state court
Kansas filed its own suit and won the removal fight. U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree remanded the case to Kansas state court in May 2025, rejecting Pfizer's effort to move it to federal jurisdiction. Pfizer appealed, and that appeal is pending in the Tenth Circuit as No. 25-3085, docketed on May 15, 2025, which means the removal question in these cases is live in two circuits at once.
The Kansas suit and the Texas suit differ in more than posture. Kansas alleges violations of its own consumer protection statute, and its complaint focuses on the same general theory that Pfizer overstated the vaccine's ability to stop transmission and understated risks. Kansas's case has not produced a merits ruling either.
What Florida still has to prove
The Florida complaint leans on the breadth of the state statute, and the breadth cuts both ways. FDUTPA does not require the state to prove that any particular consumer relied on a representation or was harmed by it. Paragraph 146 says as much, alleging that Pfizer's misrepresentations violated the act regardless of whether an individual consumer decided to receive or forgo the vaccine. That paragraph is doing defensive work. Texas lost in part on the finding that the statements were not connected to a consumer transaction, and Florida is trying to foreclose the argument that a person who never received the product has no claim at all.
Two structural problems remain.
The first is time. Under Section 501.207(5), the enforcing authority may not bring an action more than four years after a violation, or more than two years after the last payment in a transaction involved in a violation, whichever is later. The complaint says the conduct began in 2020 and continues. Counting forward from the filing date, the four-year window reaches violations from October 2022 onward, which is roughly when Pfizer moved the vaccine to the commercial market. The complaint alleges that the company nearly quadrupled the price from about $30 a dose to a range of $110 to $130 a dose, and that transition is where the pricing allegations live.
The second is the penalty. Florida asks for $10,000 per violation under Section 501.2075 and $15,000 under Section 501.2077 where the victim was a senior citizen or a person with a disability. Nothing in either statute defines what counts as a violation for a marketing campaign that ran for years across television, print, and social media, which is why per-violation penalties in consumer protection cases are negotiated as much as they are litigated. The complaint also asks for disgorgement under Section 501.207(3), and it alleges that Pfizer took in more than $80 billion from COVID-19 vaccine sales and spent more than $10 billion on advertising between 2020 and 2023, while Bourla received nearly $102 million in compensation over the same period.
The claim against Bourla personally turns on a three-part test the complaint lays out in paragraph 150: an individual defendant may be liable if he participated directly in the deceptive or unfair conduct, controlled it, or had the authority to control it along with actual or constructive knowledge of it. Florida also pleads in paragraph 151 that Pfizer was subject to obligations to the attorney general under prior consent judgments that prohibited the sort of consumer deception alleged here, which if established would speak to willfulness and to the penalty tier rather than to liability.
What Pfizer says
Pfizer's response has been short. The company told Reuters that the state's allegations have no merit and that it would respond to the suit in due course, and it said its representations about the vaccine have been accurate and science-based and that it stands behind the vaccine's safety and efficacy. The attorney general's office declined to expand on the filing, telling Reuters that the complaint and Uthmeier's comments speak for themselves.
That answer will get longer in a motion to dismiss. The company's strongest ground is the one it won on in Texas, that the PREP Act forecloses state enforcement actions over statements about a declared countermeasure, and the fact that two federal judges have divided on it is the reason the question is now before the Fifth Circuit. Its second ground is that a statement about a product's risks, made while regulators had the underlying data, is not the kind of conduct a consumer protection statute reaches. Florida's answer to the first is the disclaimer in paragraph 23. Its answer to the second will have to be evidence.
No hearing has been set in the Florida case. The Fifth Circuit's ruling in the Texas appeal could arrive at any point in the coming weeks, and it will shape the arguments in St. Lucie County one way or the other.
Primary sources
- Office of the Attorney General, State of Florida, Complaint, Office of the Attorney General v. Pfizer Inc. and Albert Bourla, Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, St. Lucie County (filed Oct. 1, 2026), for the two FDUTPA counts, the paragraph 23 disclaimers, the paragraph 146 and 150 liability pleadings, the paragraph 151 consent judgment history, the pricing, advertising, and compensation allegations, and the prayer for relief.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, 42 U.S.C. 247d-6d, for the PREP Act immunity provision, the definition of loss, and the willful misconduct exception.
- Florida Legislature, Section 501.207, Florida Statutes, together with Sections 501.2075 and 501.2077, for the enforcement authority, the four-year limitations period, the equitable remedies, and the civil penalty amounts.
- U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Order granting motion to dismiss, State of Texas v. Pfizer Inc., No. 5:23-cv-00312-C (Dec. 30, 2024), for the PREP Act immunity, preemption, and trade or commerce grounds.
- Courthouse News Service, Fifth Circuit might inject new life into Texas' Covid-19 vaccine lawsuit, for the September 1, 2026 argument, the panel's composition, the jurisdictional question raised at argument, and the positions of Kannon Shanmugam for Pfizer and Johnathan Stone for Texas.
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, docket for No. 25-10182, State of Texas v. Pfizer, for the oral argument entry of September 1, 2026, and the briefing and amicus filings.
- U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, docket for No. 6:24-cv-01128, Kansas, State of v. Pfizer Inc., for the 2024 filing and the remand proceedings, and the Tenth Circuit, docket for No. 25-3085, State of Kansas v. Pfizer, for the pending appeal of the remand order.
- Reuters, Florida attorney general sues Pfizer and CEO over COVID-19 vaccine claims, syndicated copy of the wire report, for Pfizer's statement that the allegations have no merit and its statement on the accuracy of its representations, the attorney general's office response, and the remedies the state is seeking.