Well, thanks to a ruling yesterday by a trio of judges put on the federal bench by President George W. Bush, New York State’s efforts to give a modicum of human dignity to airline passengers stuck in planes for hours on the ground may now be for naught.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held Tuesday that New York’s Passenger Bill of Rights is pre-empted by federal law, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. After all, the New York Passenger Bill of Rights is pretty darn radical. It requires that when passengers have been stuck on planes on New York runways for more than three hours, the airlines have to provide adequate electricity for fresh air and lights, waste removal to clean out overflowing toilets, and adequate food and drinking water and other refreshments. Nope, wouldn’t want the states to be able to require these sorts of things at all.

Read more here in the New York Times.