Key facts
- Pastel Cartel, the Texas maker of Esco Bars, has ended its lawsuit against the FDA. The parties filed a joint stipulation on July 7, 2026, and Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra dismissed the case the next day, without prejudice, so it can be refiled
- The suit covered the FDA’s refusal to even review more than 100 Esco Bar products — disposables and bottled e-liquids — filed as premarket tobacco applications (PMTAs)
- Walking away is not an FDA authorization. Esco Bars still hold no marketing order and remain unauthorized to sell in the US
Pastel Cartel, the company behind the Esco Bars disposable brand, has dropped its federal lawsuit against the FDA, and no judge ever ruled on whether the agency was in the right. The two sides filed a stipulation of dismissal on July 7, and Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra closed the case the following day with a one-page order.
The dispute goes back to August 2023, when Pastel Cartel sued in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (Pastel Cartel LLC v. FDA, No. 1:23-cv-01010). At issue were the FDA’s “refuse-to-accept” (RTA) letters, the agency’s decision to reject the company’s applications for more than 100 products without a scientific review. An RTA isn’t a rejection on the merits; it’s a “we won’t look.” Pastel Cartel argued the FDA blocked the applications over paperwork, chiefly a claim that the company hadn’t provided authorization to reference certain Tobacco Product Master Files (TPMFs), and it questioned the agency’s reliance on revised application forms that appeared close to the submission deadline.
That gatekeeping now survives the challenge, but not because a court blessed it. It survives because the challenger walked away before the court decided anything. A dismissal without prejudice settles nothing on the law; it just clears the docket.
What it means for you. On the shelf, nothing changes, and that’s the honest takeaway. Ending the lawsuit does not authorize Esco Bars, and none of the products in this fight came out of it with an FDA marketing order. Buying an unauthorized disposable is the same bet it was a month ago: you can’t be fully sure what’s inside, and it can disappear from sale the moment enforcement catches up. If you’d rather not layer legal limbo on top of the risk that’s already there, it’s worth knowing which products have actually cleared FDA review — we track the disposables worth considering. None of this makes vaping risk-free; it’s about not stacking uncertainty on uncertainty.
The FDA’s side of the ledger is the reason it moved in the first place. Esco Bars sold in sweet, youth-friendly flavors, and on June 22, 2023 the agency announced an inspection blitz that produced more than 180 warning letters to retailers selling Elf Bar and Esco Bars, driven largely by how many teenagers were reaching for them. A “without prejudice” ending leaves that tension open rather than resolving it.
So two things are worth watching: whether Pastel Cartel refiles or quietly moves on, and whether the FDA ever issues a substantive decision on those applications. The case is closed. The real question it raised — what it actually takes to legally sell a disposable in the US — is still unanswered.
