MANHATTAN (CN) - Like the failed ban on large sodas before it, New York City faces a lawsuit from the restaurant chain it wants to disclose salt amounts on their menus.
In force since Dec. 1, the new regulation from the city's Department of Health & Mental Hygiene requires chain restaurants to put a salt-shaker cartoon alongside items on their menus containing more than 2,300 mg of sodium. The menus would also have to include a "warning" that such foods "can increase blood pressure and risk of heart disease and stroke."
Violators face $200 fines for noncompliance when penalties take effect in March.
But the National Restaurant Association claims in a Dec. 3 lawsuit that the city rules fail to align with an upcoming law passed by Congress that will do the same thing.
With the federal Nutrition Labeling and Education Act set to take effect in December 2016, it would have made sense for New York City to delay enforcement of its rules by a year, the restaurants say.
Instead the salt regulations went from a June 2015 proposal by Mayor Bill de Blasio to a September vote by the city's health board, with an effective date just 11 weeks later.
The restaurant group says it is "fully supportive of the federal law," and points out that "its members have been working for months in preparation for compliance."
But the city's health department is grandstanding, simply "looking to grab headlines" and make NYC look like it's the "purveyor of 'first in the nation' health initiatives," the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court states.
Meanwhile, in truth, New York City's "sodium regulation is illogical, unlawful and more likely to mislead consumers about sodium health than help them," the 46-page lawsuit states.
"The regulation, like the soda ban before it, is completely arbitrary in its scope, reach and application," the complaint states. "And this time the board's action is worse."
De Blasio's predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, made headlines when he championed a failed bid to put a lid on the size of sugary drinks sold in the city in March 2013. The state's highest court tossed the rule in June 2014.
Representing 1 million restaurants across the country with more than 14 million employees, the National Restaurant Association says that NYC's sodium regulation is similarly misguided because it only targets restaurant chains with more than 15 locations, leaving other vendors like food trucks, independent restaurants, delis, grocery stores and convenience stores out of reach.
The federal law meanwhile targets restaurants with at least 20 locations.
Calling New York City's law an example of "renegade regulating at its worst," the group enumerates "a startling number of legal deficiencies" within the statute.
When Congress passed the federal law, it "expressly" included rules banning local governments from enacting menu labeling mandates that don't adhere to their rules, the lawsuit states.
New York City lawmakers failed to take heed of that guidance, however, "in their fervor to break new ground, and unable to devise a logical means of advising consumers about sodium intake in a way that was not preempted by federal law."