Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Michael Bloomberg’

Judge strikes down Bloomberg soda ban, cont’d

My new op-ed at the Daily Caller is their “most shared” this morning. Excerpt:

On Monday, Judge Tingling struck down the soda ban in a sweeping opinion that does everything but hand Mayor Poppins his umbrella and carpetbag. This wasn’t just a temporary restraining order putting the regulation on hold for a few weeks. The judge struck down the ban permanently both on the merits (“fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences”) and as overstepping the rightful legal powers of the New York City Department of Health…

[For] the mayor and his public health crew… the biggest reproach in the decision isn’t in being found to have gotten the facts wrong, it’s being found to have violated the law.

And if anyone is expected to know and play by the rules, it’s a nanny.

Michael Grynbaum, New York Times:

[Bloomberg’s] administration seemed caught off guard by the decision. Before the judge ruled, the mayor had called for the soda limits to be adopted by cities around the globe; he now faces the possibility that one of his most cherished endeavors will not come to fruition before he leaves office, if ever. …

The measure was already broadly unpopular: In a New York Times poll conducted last August, 60 percent of city residents said it was a bad idea for the Bloomberg administration to pass the limits…

Ross Sandler, a professor at New York Law School, said city laws deemed “arbitrary and capricious” had frequently been reinstated upon appeal.

The Times also profiles Judge Tingling and reports on reactions by New Yorkers in the street (not favorable toward the ban). Coverage from yesterday, including my podcast with Cato’s Caleb Brown, here. NYU’s Rick Hills, as often happens, takes a different view. (& Point of Law; and more) Update: as of March 15 my Daily Caller piece has been recommended on Facebook 3,700 times, surely a record for me.

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Judge to Bloomberg: unhand that soda

In a sweeping decision, trial court judge Milton Tingling has struck down the ban on sugary drinks decreed by the New York City Department of Health, which had been scheduled to go into effect tomorrow. I discuss the ruling in a Cato podcast above. I’m also quoted by Jillian Kay Melchior at National Review Online:

It was a sweeping ruling, because the judge said not only was the ban arbitrary and capricious, but it also went beyond the public-health agency’s powers under the statute. It meant that, even if Bloomberg went back and got a better factual justification for it, he had no legal right to do it. The agency just plain lacked the power. It means that the powers that public-health agencies claim because of emergency dangers like a raging epidemic — they don’t get to rule by dictate about other elements of our life that are not emergencies.

Other coverage: New York Post, CBS New York, Moin Yahya, David Henderson. As the law’s effective date approached, city residents were learning more about its unpleasant effects on such everyday activities as ordering beverages to split with pizza delivery, mixers at nightclubs, table pitchers to serve kids’ birthday parties, and, most recently, coffee, the subject of a virally famous poster from the local Dunkin’ Donuts operation.

P.S. And now I’ve got a Daily Caller piece out on the decision. See follow-up post here.

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Bloomberg soda follies, cont’d

The mayor is urging New York state to adopt his city’s ban on large sugary drinks [NY Daily News, CBS New York] And under recently announced details, the city’s ban will prohibit the buying of 2-liter sodas with pizza deliveries and the buying of family pitchers at kid’s birthday party venues, even though such orders are commonly split among several customers in a party [New York Post]:

Typically, a pizzeria charges $3 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke. But under the ban, customers would have to buy six 12-ounce cans at a total cost of $7.50 to get an equivalent amount of soda.

“I really feel bad for the customers,” said Lupe Balbuena of World Pie in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

It will also restrict the offering of mixers as part of bottle service in nightclubs.

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NYC: Bloomberg mulls ban on Styrofoam cups, containers

Joining Seattle and Brookline, Mass., the “Bloomberg administration is considering banning Styrofoam cups and containers — popular at thousands of delis and food carts across the city — as it prepares to roll out a major recycling announcement in the coming weeks, a Sanitation Department official said yesterday.” [NY Post] “At the end of 2006, the New York Post rounded up what is very likely a partial list of items the New York City Council banned or considered banning.” [Ed Driscoll, via]

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Mayor Bloomberg vs. painkillers

“So we now have a politician directly dictating medical policy to doctors at city hospitals.” [Radley Balko]

P.S. In the mayor’s view, just as you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, so you can’t fight painkiller abuse without overriding doctors’ judgment: “so you didn’t get enough painkillers and you did have to suffer a little bit…. there’s nothing perfect.” [Colin Campbell, Politicker]

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Food roundup

  • Misguided USDA regs are shuttering much-admired (and safe) artisanal Denver salumeria [Baylen Linnekin]
  • “If you’re a woman and you’ve had an average of more than one drink a day, the [CDC] considers you a ‘heavy drinker.'” [Nicole Ciandella, CEI]
  • Admitting failure of idea, Denmark prepares to repeal pioneering “fat tax” [BBC] Katherine Pratt, “A Critique of Anti-Obesity Soda Taxes and Food Taxes Today in New Zealand” [TaxProf]
  • Less cooking from scratch, more empty calories because of new school lunch regs? [Lunch Tray]
  • Once we accept premise that our weight is government’s business, NYC soda ban will be just the start [Jacob Sullum] Does it go beyond legal authority of Gotham board of health? [same] Now it’s the D.C. council catching the ban-big-soft-drinks bug [WTOP]
  • Federal prosecutors’ ADA campaign vs. restaurants: not just NYC, Twin Cities too [Bagenstos, earlier]
  • Why is research and journalism on the public health aspects of nutrition so bad? [Linnekin] Speaking of which… [same] No one’s appointed Mark Bittman national food commissar, and aren’t we glad for that [Tyler Cowen] More on that [David Oliver, beginning a new series of posts on anti-food litigation]

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