Emily Pinon, a pharmacist practicing in Jefferson County, sued the Alabama State Board of Pharmacy on Friday over new rules they recently passed regulating the profession.
Pinon is represented by Joseph Kreps, a Birmingham attorney and longtime critic of the board. Pinon also sued the board in October over emergency rules, and the board agreed to withdraw those rules.
Pinon's lawsuit filed on Friday deals with another set of rules proposed in December by the board.
Kreps said in the lawsuit filed on Friday, "The Defendants' response to Act 2025-372 has been a masterclass in bureaucratic whac-a-mole and evasion. After a failed attempt to push through unlawful emergency rules in mid to late 2025, the Board filed a new package of proposed rules on or about December 19, 2025. The Board pushed through these rules knowing full well that its board attorney at the time would raise no objections. The Board membership was expanded in last year's legislation and the December rules were proposed and filed prior to January 1, 2026, to prevent the new members of the Board from having a voice as to the legality and practicality of these rules. This current pathetic and incompetent rulemaking process has been ongoing since at least August 20, 2025, and this Board has failed over and over and over in its paltry efforts to pass these rules. These current proposals are not a good-faith implementation of reform; they are a calculated workaround designed to restore the unchecked discretion the Legislature explicitly sought to dismantle."
"The long-held false belief by this Board that 'we are the Alabama State Board of Pharmacy and we can do whatever we want' must be stopped in its tracks," Kreps said. "This suit asks the Court to declare these rules invalid and enjoin their enforcement. If the Board is allowed to circumvent Act 2025-372 and the APA through deceptive and unlawful rulemaking, the Legislature's reforms become theater, and the professional lives of Alabama pharmacists and other licensees remain at the mercy of a rogue regulatory board that views its own colleagues as nothing more than an ATM for its insiders."
Alabama lawmakers passed a 2025 bill into law reforming the Alabama State Board of Pharmacy.
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