Washington (CNN) -- The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether states can bar "data mining" companies from marketing information about doctors' drug prescriptions, an important case testing the conflicting boundaries over commercial speech and consumer protection.
The justices announced Friday they would hear the appeal, with oral arguments likely set for April.
All states allow pharmacies to collect and pass on data about the prescription-writing habits of physicians. But three states --Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont -- enacted laws in recent years creating a specific exception to that distribution: banning any use or publication of the information for "marketing purposes" of brand-name medicine.
A federal appeals court in November struck down Vermont's "Pharmaceutical Confidentiality Law," concluding it contained "a commercial speech restriction that does not directly advance the substantial state interests asserted by Vermont." Other federal courts have upheld the laws in the two other states.
Those New England states have said their rules would help shrink health care costs by making it harder for drug companies to persuade doctors to use newer, presumably more expensive, patented medicines over cheaper, generic alternatives.
The laws would require a physician's consent before "prescriber identifiable" data could be used by companies to gather and package the information for use as a marketing tool by drug makers.
Vermont legislators used language in their bill to say they were trying to correct a supposed "imbalance" in the "marketplace of ideas."
But several "health care informatics" companies sued, including lead plaintiff IMS Health, based in Norwalk, Connecticut. The companies argued such laws harm patients and violate the companies' First Amendment rights to free speech.
Federal and state privacy regulations already require that any patient-identifying information be removed from prescription histories before being sold or transferred, including names and addresses. The American Medical Association also allows doctors to voluntarily opt out of having prescription data used by so-called "detailers." Those are pharmaceutical sales representatives who market prescription drugs directly to doctors.
Firms like IMS Health say their for-profit services benefit patients and doctors by making it possible to track disease and monitor drug safety and effectiveness. Government health regulators and academic health researchers, as well as the private health industry, all have access to the information gathered by the data-mining companies.
"Laws like this one violate the First Amendment right of free speech," said a statement from IMS Health, after the high court agreed to hear the case. "In addition, we applaud the decision of the great majority of states and the federal government not to adopt similar restrictions, which harm patients by making it more difficult to communicate timely and often vital information about new medicine and safety updates on existing medicine."
Data-gathering companies said the fact the states being sued allow the data to be used for any purpose but "marketing" shows those lawmakers are not trying to protect patient privacy or to preserve a doctor's prescription-writing discretion.
Vermont argues this case is all about money, claiming "Big Pharma" spends almost $8 billion a year on marketing efforts aimed at doctors, which does not include direct consumer advertising.
"The legislature found that restricting the availability of prescribing data for use in marketing would protect medical privacy, help control health care costs, and protect public health and safety," state officials wrote in their appeal to the high court. They say state lawmakers responded after complaints from some doctors, who chafed at what they called the "intrusion" by drug companies into the way health care providers practice medicine.
The high court's eventual ruling, which would be issued after oral arguments are held -- could have broad implications nationwide. More than 100 similar data-mining restriction bills have been introduced nationwide, but only three have been enacted and none since 2007, when the legal challenges began.
The case is Sorrell v. IMS Health (10-779).
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