Florida Sues Pfizer, Accusing It of Covid Vaccine Deception and Profiteering

More than five years after the Covid vaccine rollout, some states, thankfully, are still unwilling to close the books on what happened during the pandemic.

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.

The lawsuit also points to Pfizer’s unannounced rat studies, which showed severe fertility and pregnancy complications.

By February 28, 2021, Pfizer also had reports involving 458 pregnant women exposed to the vaccine. Uthmeier quotes the findings:

More than half of the pregnant women (248 cases, or 54%) reported an adverse event from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

More than 1-in-10 women (52) who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine during their pregnancy reported a miscarriage, many within days of vaccination.

Additionally,

Six women who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine during their pregnancy reported premature deliveries; several babies died.

These reports were later joined by “tens of thousands” of adverse events involving women’s reproductive systems.

Florida also points to Pfizer’s clinical study of pregnant women. Pfizer announced it in February 2021 to evaluate the vaccine’s “safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity.” But Uthmeier says Pfizer enrolled only a fraction of the planned participants and ended the study early. It also limited enrollment to women vaccinated between 24 and 34 weeks of pregnancy.

That gap matters because the current Comirnaty package insert states:

There are no available data on Comirnaty use in pregnant women before 24 weeks gestation to inform about risks for major birth defects and miscarriage.

The Transmission Claim

The second major dispute is equally straightforward.

Pfizer executives repeatedly encouraged vaccination as a way to protect others.

In December 2020, Bourla said:

I repeat once more, that this choice not to vaccinate will not affect only your health or your life. Unfortunately, it will affect the lives of others and likely the lives of the people you love the most, who are the people that usually you are in contact with.

Similar statements followed.

In December 2021, Pfizer said vaccination and boosters remained “the best course of action to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

But Florida points to a basic problem. Pfizer’s original clinical trial did not test whether vaccination prevented person-to-person transmission.

The FDA said in December 2020 that there was no evidence at that point that the vaccine prevented transmission. A Pfizer executive later confirmed publicly that the company had not tested the vaccine for stopping transmission before its introduction.

Florida argues that Pfizer nevertheless used protection of others as a powerful sales message.

Bourla himself explained why:

When you try to explain that their fear could stand in the way of protecting their loved ones, I think this is the argument that mostly works.

From Public Health to Profit

The lawsuit goes beyond questions of safety and efficacy.

Florida portrays Pfizer’s vaccine campaign as an extraordinarily successful commercial operation.

The complaint says Pfizer turned roughly $1.5 billion in research and development spending into more than $80 billion in Covid vaccine revenue. Bourla received about $101.8 million in total compensation from 2020 through 2023.

The state also attacks Pfizer’s broader competitive conduct.

It accuses Pfizer and its allies of pressuring social-media companies to suppress critics, resisting efforts to share vaccine intellectual property, and funding efforts that raised safety concerns about competing vaccines. Florida also points to Pfizer’s sharp increase in the vaccine’s commercial price in 2023.

Those allegations form the basis of the complaint’s second FDUTPA count, which accuses Pfizer of unfair and unconscionable practices aimed at increasing market share and profits.

Pfizer Pushes Back

Pfizer rejects Florida’s account. It said after the lawsuit was filed:

The representations made by Pfizer about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based, and the company stands behind the safety and efficacy of its vaccine.

It called Florida’s allegations meritless and said it would respond in court.

There is also relevant history in Florida.

A statewide grand jury convened to investigate Covid vaccine manufacturers reported in January 2025 that it had not found evidence that manufacturers committed federal or state crimes in developing and distributing the vaccines. It did, however, criticize what it described as excessively close relationships between pharmaceutical companies and federal regulators, along with other “acute and systemic problems.”

The new case takes a different route.

Florida Goes Around the PREP Act

It also seeks $10,000 for each violation and $15,000 for violations involving seniors or people with disabilities. The state wants attorney fees, costs, and equitable relief that could include disgorgement of profits.

Florida appears to have structured the case to avoid the broad liability protections Pfizer has invoked in Covid vaccine litigation under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. The complaint expressly states that Florida is not bringing a federal claim or a “claim for loss” covered by that law. Instead, Uthmeier is pursuing Pfizer under state consumer-protection law.

Uthmeier also highlights what that liability shield means in practice. The complaint cites the case of a 14-year-old girl who died from acute cardiac failure caused by myocarditis after receiving Pfizer’s jab. It notes that Pfizer invoked the PREP Act in that litigation and says the company now claims “near complete immunity from liability for her death.”

In December 2024, then-Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra extended the Covid declaration through December 31, 2029.

Current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has since ended separate Covid emergency-use declarations, but left the PREP Act shield intact. That remains striking given that Kennedy denounced the law in 2023 as protecting vaccine makers from accountability for what he called “mass murder.”

No court has yet ruled on Florida’s allegations.

But the lawsuit ensures that questions many officials, corporations, and media treated as settled during the pandemic will now be argued in court.

This time, Florida is trying to make Pfizer answer them without letting the PREP Act end the case at the courthouse door.