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 Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to get New Yorkers off sodas just hit a major obstacle. A state judge stopped the impending ban on sugary beverages, one day before it was to be implemented. 

As of Tuesday (March 12), restaurants, movie theaters, sporting venues, and other businesses regulated by the city’s health department, would no longer be allowed to sale drinks larger than 16 ounces. New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling brought the plan to a permanent halt. “[The city] is enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations,” Judge Tingling wrote in his ruling. “The rule would not only violate the separation of powers doctrine, it would eviscerate it. Such an evisceration has the potential to be more troubling than sugar sweetened drinks.”

Bloomberg’s attempt was seen as an overstep of both his boundaries, and that of the Board of Health. “It is arbitrary and capricious because it applies to some but not all food establishments in the city,” he continued, citing the extra rule that makes the entire program purposeless. “It excludes other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and/or calories on suspect grounds, and the loopholes inherent in the rule, including but not limited to no limitations on refills, defeat and/or serve to gut the purpose of the rule.”

Supermarkets and other similar chains would be exempt from the ban since they are not mandated by the city.

The measure was introduced in an attempt to grab hold of the obesity problem in the city, which kills more than 5,000 New Yorkers each year.

Photo: Frank Franklin II/AP