Resources

“Preempting LGBTQ+ Rights: How States Undermine Local Leadership and Innovation on LGBTQ+ Equality,” is a 2026 update of a previous report, published as a partnership between A Better Balance, Equality Federation, and the Local Solutions Support Center.

This white paper tells the powerful and timely story of how abusive preemption has paved the way for the rise of federal authoritarianism – and how preemption is now being used to implement that agenda.

A new white paper from Local Progress and Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC), Driving Toward Equitable Traffic Enforcement, offers local advocates and policymakers a roadmap for advancing traffic safety policies that promote driving equity - while highlighting preemption-related concerns to keep in mind.  

Rick Su, Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, has written a new white paper for LSSC that charts the growth and evolution of immigration-related preemption measures in recent years.

A new white paper by Richard Briffault for Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC), Preemption of Local Election Administration, looks at how legislatures are working to advance abusive preemption measures designed to burden LEOs and limit their ability to promote democracy.

This paper is a brief update to our earlier white paper, “Preempting Progress: States Take Aim at Local Prosecutors,” cataloging attempts to curtail the discretion of local prosecutors. In this update, we also address successful efforts to push back against the efforts to strip power from local prosecutors and the communities that elected them.

In a new paper from A Better Balance, Local Solutions Support Center, and Equality Federation, we trace the local roots of LGBTQ+ equality in the United States and highlight the different types of abusive preemption that target local authority to protect LGBTQ+ individuals.

Some states have begun to use preemption to force localities to criminalize camping in public, taking local resources away from proven solutions that could address the root causes of homelessness. Rather than solve the crisis, this preemption exacerbates it by punishing people who can find shelter nowhere else.

SSC’s new 2022 Mid-Session report looks at how state elected officials are continuing to undermine local authority on topics ranging from educational curriculum to voting rights to labor laws to LGBTQ equality.

The Local Solutions Support Center has compiled short memos summarizing the nature and scope of local authority in each state.

This groundbreaking new framework lays out a vision for rebalancing state and local relations, and provides model constitutional language to encourage legal reform.

By the middle of the 2026 legislative session, Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) tracked nearly 850 abusive preemption bills across states currently in legislative session.

State lawmakers pushed more than 800 abusive preemption bills across 48 states in 2025. Many of the preemption hotspots the LSSC team tracked - from immigration to anti-DEI efforts - align with the Trump administration’s rhetoric. In fact, it’s impossible to tell the story of preemption in 2025 without considering the impact of the new administration on policy making and people.

As many 2025 state legislative sessions come to a close, abusive preemption once again threatens local control of a number of issues. Across the country, states continue to advance legislation that interferes with the ability of local governments to tailor local solutions for local needs.

Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) is tracking nearly 600 abusive preemption bills so far this year - a significantly higher number of bills than our team identified in all of 2024. The new federal landscape is emboldening state lawmakers to advance harmful preemption bills - with a particular focus on anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-DEI legislation.

Our new report, Preemption’s Role in Undermining American Democracy: 2024 Legislative Session Overview, tracks the 411 abusive preemption bills LSSC identified nationwide this year across 16 different issue spaces. This report explores the major areas of everyday life where lawmakers and corporations are advancing preemption in an effort to undermine democracy.

The scope of abusive preemption bills is widening – from Death Star preemption; to efforts to undermine the power of reform-oriented prosecutors; to discriminating against transgender youth; to making it harder for local officials to successfully conduct elections. LSSC’s mid-session report explores the top trends we’re tracking so far this session, as well as a few promising victories that advocates are securing.

Despite the growing threat of abusive preemption, LSSC and our partners across the country secured important wins in 2022 – in state houses, in the courts, and in organizing spaces. We learned lessons and developed best practices that are already strengthening our work as the national hub countering abusive preemption and strengthening democracy as we head into 2023. This new report highlights some of the Local Solutions Support Center’s key activities to support the field and push back against abusive preemption in 2022.

In this report, LSSC tracks how abusive preemption was used during the 2022 legislative session by state lawmakers at the behest of corporations to undermine local authority, particularly on public health authority, LGBTQ rights, and democracy & voting rights.

SSC’s new 2022 Mid-Session report looks at how state elected officials are continuing to undermine local authority on topics ranging from educational curriculum to voting rights to labor laws to LGBTQ equality.

2021 was an unprecedented year for abusive preemption. As local elected officials and advocates sought to protect their communities from the ongoing public health and economic effects of the pandemic, they encountered preemption efforts from state lawmakers on a scale never before seen.

The Local Solutions Support Center’s (LSSC) report explores 2021 legislative activity in more detail. Overall in the session, LSSC tracked over 400 preemption bills – more than two times the number of bills tracked during the 2019 session.

Home rule reform, like abusive preemption, can be difficult to explain – even if you’re doing this work day-in and day-out. That’s why our national table is releasing new message guidance to help advocates make the case for home rule reform and move people to action. This guidance is meant to help you explain what home rule reform is and why action is urgently needed now.

The Local Solutions Support Center has designed a toolkit to help organizers understand what public health authority preemption looks like and how to talk about it in a way that’s both accessible to broader audiences, and effective.

This polling from the African-American Research Collaborative found that it is most helpful to engage voters through a policy position and then transition to a discussion of how to influence state government to make positive change.

Thanks to the relentless work of advocates, activists, and policymakers across our ecosystem, we have a growing sense of the tactics we can use to counter abusive preemption and call out its true purpose. LSSC’s new report can serve as action-oriented inspiration for both the well-tenured and emerging leaders whose creativity and passion pushes our fight forward.

This post by Alina Schnake-Mahl, ScD, MPH and Leah Schinasi, MSPH, PhD focuses on state lawmakers pushing abusive preemption measures about heat protection, or neglecting to pass heat protection policies.

This post by Ruqaiijah Yearby discusses how recent state efforts to prohibit DEI practices often exceed the state’s authority and conflict with long-standing legal interpretations of equality that seek to address racial discrimination.

This post by Mary Bogle explores how Americans are looking for bold new solutions to entrenched problems like poverty and income inequality. High quality experiments on GI fit squarely into this space.

This post by Sandhya Kajeepeta explores how state preemption is fueling a racialized housing crisis, and Good Cause laws are at risk

This post by Cristine Soto DeBerry explores connections between Trump’s militarized crackdowns on cities and attempts to preempt progressive prosecutors.

State lawmakers pushed more than 800 abusive preemption bills across 48 states in 2025. Many of the preemption hotspots the LSSC team tracked - from immigration to anti-DEI efforts - align with the Trump administration’s rhetoric. In fact, it’s impossible to tell the story of preemption in 2025 without considering the impact of the new administration on policy making and people.

Since 2012, a growing number of states and municipalities have taken action to protect LGBTQ+ youth from the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion “therapy.” But in recent years, amid escalating political attacks on LGBTQ+ people across virtually every aspect of life, there are also growing attacks on these protections—including through abusive preemption tactics. 

Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) is tracking nearly 600 abusive preemption bills so far this year - a significantly higher number of bills than our team identified in all of 2024. The new federal landscape is emboldening state lawmakers to advance harmful preemption bills - with a particular focus on anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-DEI legislation.

The fourth edition of The Local Power & Politics Review explores how abusive preemption legislation has permeated so many areas of American policy. The new edition covers a wide range of issue areas – from abortion access to local environmental action to LGBTQ+ equality to prosecutorial discretion.

Our new report, Preemption’s Role in Undermining American Democracy: 2024 Legislative Session Overview, tracks the 411 abusive preemption bills LSSC identified nationwide this year across 16 different issue spaces. This report explores the major areas of everyday life where lawmakers and corporations are advancing preemption in an effort to undermine democracy.

This paper is a brief update to our earlier white paper, “Preempting Progress: States Take Aim at Local Prosecutors,” cataloging attempts to curtail the discretion of local prosecutors. In this update, we also address successful efforts to push back against the efforts to strip power from local prosecutors and the communities that elected them.

“State takeovers of public schools and districts is one prong of a multi-prong approach to dismantling resistance to oppressive legislation,” Steven L. Nelson, Ph.D. writes.

The scope of abusive preemption bills is widening – from Death Star preemption; to efforts to undermine the power of reform-oriented prosecutors; to discriminating against transgender youth; to making it harder for local officials to successfully conduct elections. LSSC’s mid-session report explores the top trends we’re tracking so far this session, as well as a few promising victories that advocates are securing.

This resource from ChangeLab Solutions and the Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC), newly updated for 2023, provides advocates with the research and data they need to document the harmful consequences of preemption and advocate for repealing inequitable preemption laws.

Despite the growing threat of abusive preemption, LSSC and our partners across the country secured important wins in 2022 – in state houses, in the courts, and in organizing spaces. We learned lessons and developed best practices that are already strengthening our work as the national hub countering abusive preemption and strengthening democracy as we head into 2023. This new report highlights some of the Local Solutions Support Center’s key activities to support the field and push back against abusive preemption in 2022.

The third edition of The Local Power & Politics Review features a series of articles that explore how abusive preemption legislation has impacted states across the country. The new edition covers a wide range of issue areas – from public health policy to local environmental action to public schools to public safety to elections.

Ramón Cruz, President of the Sierra Club, explores how some state legislatures are targeting private financial institutions in order to boycott or penalize them simply for adopting measures that consider climate change in their investments, constituting a preemption effort against proactive climate action.