Dive Brief:
- The New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state of New York, agreed yesterday to hear arguments over the mayor's controversial plan to limit the sizes of sodas.
- The soda ban has already been rejected twice by courts, but the Bloomberg administration has continued to pursue legal recourse.
- The court, however, won't hear the case until next year -- after Michael Bloomberg's term as mayor expires. Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for mayor has said he supports the ban (but may be backing away from a court challenge.) Republican nominee Joseph Lhota opposes the ban.
Dive Insight:
We've always been torn about the soda ban. As a general rule, we're free-market sorts. We loathe the nanny state and we prefer a world where people make informed decisions about what they consume. On the other hand, we have been in New York City's bodegas, playgrounds, movie theaters, subways and school yards. We have seen the sort of "informed" decisions that kids here make and it troubles us to no end.
But in the end this is a political and legal battle, and it will be fought on political and legal grounds. And the courts seem to have already made clear that as horrific as the health of American children has become, there is no legal reasoning sufficient to ban large sodas.