Florida is opening another front.

On Thursday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued Pfizer and its chairman and CEO, Albert Bourla, accusing them of deceiving Floridians about the safety of the company's Covid vaccine, overstating its ability to stop transmission, suppressing criticism, and using those practices to build a hugely profitable market.

The 49-page complaint was filed in the Circuit Court for St. Lucie County. It brings two counts under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, or FDUTPA. The first targets Pfizer's safety representations and omissions. The second accuses Pfizer and Bourla of unfair business practices and profiteering.

Florida is not suing for individual vaccine injuries or bringing federal claims. Instead, it argues that Pfizer violated state consumer-protection law by withholding material information while aggressively marketing its product.

Reuters reported that Pfizer says the case has no merit.

"Not a Single Safety Signal"

The complaint begins with one of Bourla's most memorable attacks on vaccine critics and skeptics: "Those people are criminals."

Bourla made the remark in November 2021 while discussing people who spread what he called vaccine misinformation. Florida now turns the phrase back against Pfizer.

The state alleges that Pfizer repeatedly assured consumers its vaccine posed no meaningful safety concerns while possessing information that complicated those assurances.

One central example involves myocarditis and pericarditis.

By June 2021, the FDA had added warnings about those conditions to fact sheets for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The complaint also cites military data, Israeli reports, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) findings, and Pfizer's own documents concerning the risk, particularly among adolescent boys and young men.

Yet in January 2023, Bourla told CNBC that Pfizer had reviewed the data and had seen "not a single [safety] signal."

Florida argues that statement was deceptive because evidence of the myocarditis risk was already well known.

Pfizer today acknowledges an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis after mRNA vaccination, particularly among adolescent males. The dispute, then, is not simply whether the risk exists. It is whether Pfizer accurately described what it knew, and when.

Pregnancy Questions

Florida also focuses heavily on pregnancy.

The complaint cites January 2021 text messages in which then-President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, raised a concern that post-vaccination fever and inflammatory reactions "could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester." Then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy agreed.