The judicial panel said those inconsistencies go “beyond health concerns, in that it manipulates choices to try to change consumer norms.” 
 
 In March, a lower court judge first rejected the ban that stropped city restaurants, delis and other businesses from selling large sugary drinks, just a day before it was scheduled to launch. An appeals court today dealt another blow to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed soda ban, calling the controversial regulation “invalid” because it violates “the principle of separation of powers.” 
 
 Writing for the Appellate Division, Justice Renwick also criticized Bloomberg and the Health Department for proposing a ban with giant loopholes, which would exclude colas and energy drinks but allow milkshakes and fruit juices. A unanimous four-judge panel at the appeals court agreed, finding that the board had stepped beyond its power to regulate public health and usurped the policy-making role of the legislature. Mayor Bloomberg called the decision “a temporary setback,” in his crusade to reduce obesity in the Big Apple, adding that he planned to submit an appeal to the state’s highest court. “Indeed, the rule was drafted, written and proposed by the Office of the Mayor and submitted to the Board, which enacted it without substantive changes.” 
 
 In a statement blasting today’s ruling, Bloomberg noted that since the ban was shot down in March “more than 2,000 New Yorkers have died from the effects of diabetes.” He said that both diabetes and obesity “are disproportionately linked to sugary drink consumption.” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling slapped Bloomberg and his Board of Health for overstepping their bounds this spring.
– New York, your justice has been served—now would you like fries with that? A state appeals court has upheld the New York Supreme Court's ruling to strike down Mayor Michael Bloomberg's soda ban, finding that the prohibition on vendors selling 16-ounce-plus sugary drinks "violated the state principle of separation of power," Reuters reports. The decision was unanimous among the Appellate Division's four judges. "Like Supreme Court, we conclude that in promulgating this regulation the Board of Health failed to act within the bounds of its lawfully delegated authority," they wrote in their ruling, per the New York Post.