C.L.A.S.H. Fought the Law, And the Law Won: District Judge Upholds Constitutionality of Smoking Ban

Justice Marrero of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York upheld, in a 83-page decision, smoking bans that NYC and the state enacted last year. NYC C.L.A.S.H.'s constiutional challenges were quite tenuous, especially to the ones invoking the First Amendment and arguing that higher level of scrutiny should be afforded to laws concerning smokers under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Laws based on gender get intermediate scrutiny, but laws for smokers get strict scrutiny? Here are two articles about the case: one in the New York Times and one in Newsday. You can read those articles or sit back with a cigarette and read the 83-page opinion -- just don't do that in a bar or restaurant.