You’re right that it was only delayed, but it has so far been delayed three times. Retailers filed lawsuits against the ban that the courts have no capacity to

You’re right that it was only delayed, but it has so far been delayed three times. Retailers filed lawsuits against the ban that the courts have no capacity to deal with, so it’s unlikely to be enforced (or formally reversed) until the outbreak subsides. I live in Brooklyn and still get plastic bags at three different grocery stores I can think of. (I reuse them as trash can liners, so the ban always seemed silly to me — I’d need to start buying my own plastic bags in addition to the paper ones I recycle.) There was a week or two that most stores switched to paper, so you may be seeing paper-only bags from stores that have unused stock to go through. Some grocers (Whole Foods) have always been paper-only. New Hampshire, Illinois, and Massachusetts have specifically banned the use of reusable shopping bags in grocery stores state-wide on sanitation grounds. San Francisco has as well. I was confusing these with NYC when I commented above. NYC’s enforcement delays are unrelated to concerns over reusables.