Sugary drink tax a sugary drink tax alone. In March 2017, Pepsi laid off between 80 and 100 employees at two distribution plants in Philadelphia and one plant in nearby Wilmington, Delaware. The company blamed the layoffs on the tax, an assertion rejected by the city government. In September 2016, the American Beverage Association, Philadelphia business owners, and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the soda tax, alleging that the tax violated the "Tax Uniformity Clause" of the state constitution. The legal challenge was dismissed by the Court of Common Pleas in December 2016, and in June 2017 the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
Sugary drink tax found that New Yorkers opposed a state tax on soda of one penny per ounce by a 35-point margin, but opposition dropped to a margin of one point when respondents were told the money would go towards health care. A Thompson Reuters poll released in the same month found that 51 percent of Americans opposed a soda tax, while 33 percent supported one. Fighting the creation of soft drink taxes, the American Beverage Association, the largest U.S. trade organization for soft drink bottlers, has spent considerable money lobbying Congress. The Association's annual lobbying spending rose from about $391,000 to more