Regulators cracked down on sweet e-cigarettes after children’s use increased. Now the Supreme Court is getting involved.

WASHINGTON (AP) — E-cigarettes are headed to the Supreme Court next week as federal regulators urge the Supreme Court to uphold its ban on sweet, flavored products following a surge in e-cigarette use among youth.

The Food and Drug Administration has rejected more than a million marketing applications for candy or fruit-flavored products that appeal to children. It’s part of a broader crackdown that advocates say has helped curb vaping among teens after an “epidemic” surge in 2019.

But e-cigarette companies said the agency unfairly ignored arguments that their sweet e-liquid products would help adults quit smoking traditional cigarettes without putting children at greater risk.

Republican Donald Trump’s administration may take a different approach after he vowed to “save” vaping in a social media post in September.

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in the FDA’s appeal of a decision by the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. While other courts upheld the FDA’s denials, the appeals court sided with Dallas-based Triton Distribution.

It issued a decision blocking the marketing of nicotine-containing liquids such as “Jimmy The Juice Man in Peachy Strawberry,” which are heated with an e-cigarette to create an inhalable aerosol.

Triton said the FDA improperly changed its requirements without sufficient warning.

“It kind of takes the chair out of the hands of applicants,” said Marc Scheineson, a former FDA deputy commissioner and attorney who now represents other small electronic tobacco companies.

The FDA has been slow to regulate the now multi-billion dollar e-cigarette market, and even after years of crackdowns, flavored e-cigarettes, which are technically illegal, are still widely available. The agency has approved some tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes and recently approved its first menthol-flavored electronic cigarettes for adult smokers.

The marketing denials, combined with federal and state enforcement of age limits, have helped drive nicotine use among youth to its lowest levels in a decade, said Dennis Henigan, vice president of legal and regulatory affairs at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids .

He says the FDA has made its requirements clear and fears a court decision that would lead to greater availability of flavored vape products, which are the predominant choice among the 1.6 million high school students who still smoke . “We believe this would be a real detriment to public health,” Henigan said.