## Facts

- The New York State Public Health Council, through the Commissioner of Health, adopted comprehensive indoor anti-smoking regulations (“Part 25”) under its general public health authority.
- The rules restricted smoking in numerous public places and workplaces and specified conditions for designated smoking areas (including detailed space and partition requirements).
- The regulations contained multiple exemptions for certain establishments and settings.
- During the same period, the Legislature considered various smoking-control bills but did not enact a comparable comprehensive statutory scheme.
- Private citizens and affected business interests challenged Part 25 as beyond the Council’s delegated authority and inconsistent with separation-of-powers principles.
- Lower courts invalidated the regulations, and the Commissioner and Council appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the Public Health Council exceeded its statutory rulemaking authority by adopting a comprehensive indoor smoking code.
2. Whether Part 25 constituted impermissible legislative policymaking in violation of New York separation-of-powers limits on administrative agencies.

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the invalidation of Part 25.
- The court held that the Public Health Council acted ultra vires by creating a broad regulatory scheme involving major policy choices not clearly set by the Legislature.
- The court concluded that the regulations represented an unconstitutional intrusion into the legislative domain.

## Legal Principles

- An agency may not use general statutory public health authority to make major social and economic policy choices reserved to the Legislature.
- Rulemaking is improper where an agency, rather than filling in technical details, makes value-laden line-drawing and balances competing interests (health, economics, and individual conduct) without clear legislative direction.
- Agency action is suspect when it “writes on a clean slate” in an area of substantial policy debate where the Legislature has considered, but not enacted, a comprehensive framework.
- Broad statutory language must supply sufficient standards when the agency adopts sweeping rules; absent guiding criteria, comprehensive policy design exceeds delegated power.
- Claimed administrative expertise does not justify regulations that primarily reflect nontechnical policy judgments rather than specialized scientific or technical determinations.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated the Public Health Council’s indoor smoking regulations because they went beyond interstitial rulemaking and instead implemented a comprehensive policy program—complete with exemptions and compromises—without clear legislative standards, thereby violating New York separation-of-powers limits on administrative authority.


Boreali v. Axelrod, 71 N.Y.2d 1 (N.Y. 1987)