BrianGarst.com

A day before it was set to go into effect, Nanny Bloomberg‘s ban on soda sales of 16oz. or more has been shot down by a state judge:

A state judge on Monday stopped Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration from banning the sale of large sugary drinks at New York City restaurants and other venues, a major defeat for a mayor who has made public-health initiatives a cornerstone of his tenure.

The city is “enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations,” New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling decided Monday.

The regulations are “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences,” the judge wrote. “The simple reading of the rule leads to the earlier acknowledged uneven enforcement even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole….the loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the state purpose of the rule.”

This is obviously a victory for liberty, and I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I hope there is more to the reasoning than presented here (having not read the decision there may well be). Of course the law is arbitrary and capricious, prohibiting sales from certain businesses and not others, and allowing sale of 17oz. slurpees but not soda. But even if it were uniform and steadfast, or applied equally, it should still have been struck down. Unfortunately, given the record of the courts in defending liberty, I don’t have much faith that it would have been.

Michael Bloomberg