NYC's ban on suggary drinks overturned

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Disgusting decision from an activist judge.

The mayor's administration does not have the power to legislate whatever arbitrary thing they like. It's not judicial activism to respect the balance of power.  If the City Council wants to put the same restrictions on certain types of businesses selling certain types of sugary drinks, they can go ahead.

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All nanny state points aside I don't really think that decision of Judge Tingling (has there ever been a better name for a judge?) is all that good for liberty lovers or classical liberals. Tingling wrote:

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This reads to me that Judge Tingling would be okay with the 20 ounce soda ban in NYC if it was extended to every business in NYC that served any type of beverage in a 20 ounce cup. This would apply to coffee shops, I would assume where massive amounts of high calorie drinks are sipped by enlightened progressive law school students every minute of the day.  The judge writes that the law is "arbitrary" if every aspect of beverage drinking in NYC is not covered by a similar law.

Furthermore, Judge Tingling also commented that supermarkets and large chain stores don’t fall under city regulations and wouldn’t have been impacted by the ban. But local, mom-and-pop bodegas would have been forced to adhere to the 16-ounce ban. Thus he is arguing that the law DOES NOT GO FAR ENOUGH and should be enforced on ALL businesses that engage in beverage sales all the way down to grocery stores.

What is worse is that the judge argues for the city council and the state legislature to pass a ban along the draconian lines he dictates. “There is no rational argument purporting to demonstrate legislative inaction in this area,” Tingling wrote. His decision is no win for libertarian minded individuals but a sounding declaration for more state intervention in individual diets.

Tingling is not making an argument for or against some sort of law regulating soda. He is saying that the inconsistency of the law undercuts the claim that it is a measure responding to an epidemic, which is the legal basis for the Board of Health's authority.   I think you also misunderstand the phrase "demonstrate legislative inaction," which is a descriptive argument about what legislators have or haven't done and is relevant to the case law.

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The law was stupid, but I don't see a basis to strike it down.

True. There's no right to colas in the Constitution. The mayor was merely exercising his 10th Amendment right.

That's not relevant here. It wasn't on the basis of the US Constitution, and it wasn't a federal judge. 

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I prefer a calorie tax on junk food sales collected with all income going toward a tax subsidy on produce.

That would be awesome! And make the poor much healthier.

There's so much that can done with sales taxes without creating a government bureaucracy that could solve all of our nations problems.  Cash registers and bar code pricing is so advanced these days that these things could be collected and redistributed without any sort of meddling.  It's a shame there's no place on the political spectrum for it.

You'd need an operation to monitor tax collections, and an operation to determine who's eligible to get the money and how much.