AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) – On June 22, the Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling that affirmed the city of Laredo’s ordinance banning single-use plastic or paper bags by merchants violates a Texas statute, a ruling that could end the state-wide single-bag bans.
The unanimous Supreme Court decision was written by Justice Nathan L. Hecht, with Justice Eva Guzman concurring in a separate opinion joined by Justice Debra Lehrmann.
“We must take statutes as they are written…Its limitation on local control encompasses the ordinance,” the ruling stated.
In 2014, the city of Laredo, Texas enacted an ordinance as part of an effort to reduce litter and trash “to create a 'trash-free city,'” the ruling states. The ordinance banned merchants from using or giving customers plastic or paper single-use bags. The ordinance states it “is not a ban on plastic bags, but an incremental implementation plan towards a cleaner city,” and if violated a fine of up to a $2,000 could be imposed.
The Supreme Court quoted in a footnote text in the court opinion from the ordinance, which says, “Subject to certain exceptions, a prohibited 'checkout bag' is a plastic one-time-use carryout bag ... that is less than 4 mils thick (or) … a 'single-use paper bag'…provided by a commercial establishment at the point of sale or elsewhere in the commercial establishment that is made from paper and contains old growth fiber and/or contains less than forty (40) percent post-consumer recycled material.”
In 2015, the Laredo Merchants Association sued the city of Laredo, claiming that the ordinance violates a Texas statute, the Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act. The Solid Waste Disposal Acts holds that “a local government… may not adopt an ordinance . . . to . . . prohibit or restrict, for solid waste management purposes, the sale or use of a container or package in a manner not authorized by state law.”
The ordinance was upheld by the trial court. In a divided opinion, the 4th District Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling, finding that the city cannot “prohibit the sale or use of plastic and paper bags.” The dissent argued that the Solid Waste Disposal Act does not preempt the ordinance because “the ordinance does not regulate solid waste containers.”
Laredo argued that the ordinance is not “solid waste management” but rather “source reduction” because banning single-use bags reduces “a source of solid waste on the front end so those single-use materials cannot be inappropriately discarded on the back end.”
Hecht stated that it is “clear that the ordinance was adopted for solid waste management purposes.”
The Supreme Court opinion noted that the ordinance also was enacted for purposes such as preventing sewer blocks and flooding and protecting water and wildlife, which all “pertain to the ancillary effects of reducing the generation of solid waste.”
The Supreme Court affirmed the appellate ruling to remand the case back to trial court to determine the Merchants’ claims for attorney’s fees and costs.
Supreme Court of Texas case number 16-0748