Welcome news from New York: a unanimous four-judge appeals court has confirmed a trial court order striking down the New York Department of Health’s attempt to ban large soda portions. The decision is here, Newsday coverage here, and our earlier coverage here.

The appeals court ruled that in enacting the ban the NYC department of health had overstepped its legally granted powers. As I observed in this Commentary article in March, New York has its own distinctive body of law by which courts step in to prevent administrative agencies from claiming quasi-legislative powers not clearly delegated to them, the rules laid out in a 1987 case called Boreali v. Axelrod. The appeals court agreed with trial court judge Milton Tingling that Boreali was directly controlling, and that the department had clearly overstepped Boreali’s ban on essentially legislative action by an administrative agency. (Why, you ask, don’t federal courts apply as tough a standard to keep administrative agencies in Washington, D.C. from arrogating to themselves essentially legislative functions? Good question…)

Although the appeals court did not reach the issue of whether the Bloomberg rules were “arbitrary and capricious,” and although neither it nor Judge Tingling reached the underlying issues of individual consumer choice that are at stake, this was far more than just a “win on a technicality.” The rule that government agencies cannot overstep their lawfully granted powers is a vital one in protecting the liberty of the citizen. On this issue, and not this alone, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has acted more as a Napoleon issuing peremptory dictates than as an elected executive carrying out the will of legislators on the City Council and in Albany. 

Napoleons of the political class are a good bit more dangerous to us all than the sugar-laden Napoleons of the bakery shelf. We should rejoice that this one is getting sent back to the kitchen.