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.
Merchants may begin using plastic bags again in Port Aransas after the city council suspended its 2-year-old ban on single-use shopping bags. Effective immediately, the ban was suspended on advice of the city’s attorney after a recent ruling by the U.S. Fourth Court of Appeals.
Although the ruling only affects the city of Laredo, city attorney Michael Morris warned that any merchant could decide to sue the city of Port Aransas using that case as a basis. The city would have to foot the bill for a defense, he said.
Council members voted 5-1 to suspend the ordinance until a final ruling by the Texas Supreme Court on Laredo Merchants Association v. City of Laredo. Council member Joan Holt was the lone “no” vote.
Along with the mayor, the council was reluctant to see the bag ban go as it has helped keep beaches and city streets cleaner. In 2014, Port Aransas became only the seventh municipality out of the state’s 1,200 cities to ban using the bags, based mainly on its threat to beach wildlife and the environment.
“It has had an effect,” said Mayor Charles Bujan at the meeting Sept. 15, “but it has been ruled illegal.”
In the Aug. 17 ruling by the San Antonio-based appeals court, judges sided with Laredo merchants who filed suit against the city for approving a bag 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 be 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 the definition, while the other says they do not. Legislators did not provide a definition in the 1993 state law.
The Laredo case is the first to make its way 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 When plastic bag manufacturers sued the city of Dallas for passing a ban, the city repealed its ordinance.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.
Port Aransas city council said the suspension would remain in place, allowing for merchants to return to single-use shopping bags, until a final court ruling.
