Airborne plastic shopping bags get caught in trees, bushes and dunes and even wind up in the ocean, where wildlife can become entangled or even ingest them with deadly results.
While Port Aransas and now all of Padre Island have implemented bans on using disposable plastic bags in stores, a ruling by the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio could bring back the bags.
Port Aransas became one of only seven of Texas’ 1,200 cities to ban single-use plastic bags when a city ordinance went into effect Jan. 1 of this year. In June, the Island Strategic Action Committee approved a resolution prohibiting Padre Island businesses from using the bags, the only area in Corpus Christi that does so. The Corpus Christi City Council discussed the possibility but has so far voted it down.
The ruling, known as Laredo Merchants Association v. City of Laredo, came Aug. 17 when judges sided with a group of Laredo merchants who filed suit against the city for approving the ban. The Fourth Court of Appeals agreed with the group’s assertion that state regulations of solid waste disposal prohibits city involvement in what items can and can’t get thrown away.
Specifically, the law says local governments can’t adopt any regulations 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 problem lies with the definition of container or package. One side says plastic bags fit in the definition, while the other says it does not. The 1993 state law does not provide a definition.
Laredo’s lawyers further argue that preventing litter does not fall into the area of waste management. Cities banning plastic bags do so because the bags are a danger to wildlife and clog storm drainage. Port Aransas and Padre Island passed bans to keep the bags off beaches and out of the water, where they can be ingested by fish, turtles and other sea creatures.
The Laredo case is the first to make it into the court system. When plastic bag manufacturers sued the city of Dallas for passing a ban, the city repealed its ordinance. The Texas Retailers Association withdrew a lawsuit against the city of Austin in 2013 after that municipality banned the bags.
The case will not be settled with this ruling, according to the experts, who expect it to eventually end up before the Texas Supreme Court.
