SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A legal battle over a hotly contested Utah law banning minimum prices for contact lenses is set to come before a federal appeals court on Thursday.
The nation’s largest contact lens companies are asking the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to strike down the measure that could have wide-ranging effects on the $4 billion industry amid an increasingly bitter pricing fight.
Alcon Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Bausch & Lomb call the law a brazen overreach written specifically to help Utah-based discount seller 1-800 Contacts.
Utah lawmakers deny that. The state’s attorney general contends that the contact lens makers that dominate the market are wrongly driving up prices and the law is a legitimate anti-trust measure.
The manufacturers are appealing a ruling from a federal judge in Utah. After temporarily blocking the law earlier this year, the 10th Circuit allowed the measure to go into effect as the case unfolds.