Supreme Court Won’t Hear Fireworks Company’s Dispute With Consumer Product Regulator

A federal appeals court previously ruled that the company brought a lawsuit too early in the regulatory process.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on April 3, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court has turned away an appeal by a fireworks company challenging notices the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued that stated its products ran afoul of federal standards.

The denial of the petition on May 19 in Jake’s Fireworks Inc. v. Consumer Product Safety Commission took the form of an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision.

The dispute centers on a regulatory technicality. The company argued that the notices constituted final agency action by the CPSC that could be challenged in court under federal law; the CPSC argued the notices were not.

The petitioner, Jake’s Fireworks Inc., is an importer of small consumer fireworks known as reloadable aerial shells or reloadable tube aerial shells. The products are commonly used backyard fireworks designed to create a visual display after they are launched 40 to 50 feet into the air. The devices are considered small because they have an outside diameter under 1.75 inches, according to the company’s petition filed with the Supreme Court on Dec. 24, 2024.

In 1990, the CPSC contemplated prohibiting these fireworks under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) but noted that “under [its then-]existing regulations, reloadable tube aerial shell fireworks devices are not banned hazardous substances.”

The decision was important because hazardous substances banned under the FHSA and the Consumer Product Safety Act cannot be imported into or sold in the United States. Violations can be punished with civil and criminal sanctions, including imprisonment.

In the end, the CPSC banned only fireworks in which the shells are larger than 1.75 inches, which means the regulation does not forbid the small aerial shells sold by Jake’s, the company argued in the petition.

However, the commission determined that the company’s fireworks were subject to regulations created under the FHSA and that samples of those products were “banned hazardous substances” under the act. The commission then sent the company a series of notices ordering the destruction of those products, saying civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance could follow, the petition said.

The company asked the commission to reconsider the notices administratively, but the commission declined to do so, and the company then applied for judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

The APA is a federal statute enacted in 1946 that governs administrative law procedures for federal executive departments and independent agencies. The late U.S. Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.) said the law was “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of the federal government.”

A federal district court ruled against the company. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed, finding that “only the Commission’s formal enforcement was reviewable under the APA,” the petition said.

The company asked the Supreme Court to determine if “judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act for ... notices of violation is unavailable until the agency further acts through formal enforcement.”

In a March 10 brief, the CPSC urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeal.

The company’s argument that the notices it received from the commission constituted “final agency action subject to judicial review under the APA” lacks merit, the commission wrote.

“The notices at issue do not mark the consummation of the process by which the Commission decides whether a product is a banned hazardous substance and whether to pursue an enforcement action.”

The Fourth Circuit “correctly articulated the governing legal standard under longstanding precedent of this Court. The APA permits judicial review “of only ‘final agency action[s],’” then-acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote.