MADISON (WSAU) A federal appeals court has reinstated Wisconsin’s minimum mark-up rule for gasoline.
The law had required that gasoline be priced above cost. It’s designed to prevent larger gas station chains from under-pricing gas to force smaller mom-and-pop competitors out of business. Last year a federal judge ruled the state’s law was unconstitutional. Today’s ruling from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the earlier ruling.
Wisconsin’s Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen had declined to appeal the earlier decision. The state’s petroleum marketing association hired its own lawyers and funded the appeal.
One of the test cases that challenged the minimum mark-up law was from Merrill, where a gas station owner was cited by the state for offering discount gas cards to senior citizens and to a high school booster club.
