You are touching on an inherent truth in TFL, which is that there are nearly infinite equivalent statements for any logical sentence.
The idea for the article was to make a real example of logical equivalence, as books on the subject stay pretty abstract. - like others have mentioned, in the real world there are smarter choices to be made.
If user is blacklisted return access denied; If account is expired return access denied; If no conditions match return access granted;
Wouldn't that be more effective?