2026 Mid-Session Trends in State Preemption
Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) is tracking nearly 850 abusive preemption bills across states currently in legislative session; on par with the total number of bills our team tracked in all of 2025 and representing a one-third increase from this same time last year.
Increasingly, abusive preemption is where federal authoritarianism and corporate greed meet. Many state lawmakers are taking their cues from the Trump administration - eroding democratic norms and embracing preemption to advance punitive immigration policies, harm LGBTQ+ people, and undermining commonsense public health measures. At the same time, corporations and their allies are continuing to pursue preemption to eradicate policies that threaten their bottom line - like minimum wage or paid sick leave measures, or workplace safety regulations.
These trends are creating a new class of power brokers and oligarchs in the United States; while deepening the already painful inequities for others - particularly for BIPOC communities, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, women, and working families.
Explore how preemption is being used this year to:
Block Protections for Economic & Physical Well-Being
Impose Ideological Control over Communities
Rewrite the Rules for Participating in Our Democracy
Blocking Protections for Economic & Physical Well-Being
Worker Rights
Lawmakers have filed more than two dozen bills aimed at eroding economic safety and equity for workers. Banning local guaranteed income programs is one of the newest abusive preemption trends in recent years - one we first identified back in 2024 along with our partners at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Security Project. There’s a growing body of evidence pointing to the important role guaranteed income programs play in helping families achieve economic stability. But as more communities began experimenting with these types of programs - amid a rising cost of living across rural, suburban, and urban regions - lawmakers began working to squash them through abusive preemption measures. Five states - Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and South Dakota - ban local guaranteed income programs. Currently, at least three states - Illinois, North Carolina, and Wisconsin - have active legislation to ban guaranteed income programs.
Lawmakers also are using preemption to slash broader workplace regulations meant to protect people. In Missouri, SB 1439 would limit the ability of local governments to create occupational licensing requirements designed to protect the health and safety of workers and customers. The bill would allow workers to sue to challenge the requirements, even before they apply for a license, and impose strict standards on the government to defend workplace regulations. The bill could invite costly litigation on a whole host of economic and workplace safety regulations. A similar bill in New Hampshire recently failed to advance.
It’s not just guaranteed income and workplace regulations lawmakers are going after - they’re even deploying preemption bills as part of their campaign against DEI. In Tennessee, for example, Governor Bill Lee signed legislation banning localities from incorporating diversity considerations into hiring for public-sector roles and contracts.
Public Health
The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda gained significant traction this last year, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. solidified his grip over HHS. While a federal court in Massachusetts recently pumped the brakes on his department’s controversial vaccine schedule changes, states are continuing to advance MAHA-aligned policies through abusive preemption.
LSSC is tracking 66 public health authority-related preemption bills as of late March - an uptick from the 43 we tracked in all of 2025. Bills attacking vaccinations, masking policies, and fluoride are the most prolific this year. At least six states - Alabama, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, and Vermont - are considering bills which would curtail vaccine and/or masking requirements. At least seven states are considering legislation to ban fluoride in drinking water, following up on similar laws enacted last year in Utah and Florida. Those states include Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, Tennessee, and Vermont. These legislative trends defy science. As LSSC Legal Team Co-Lead Leslie Zellers noted last year: “Vaccination and fluoridation of drinking water are two of the 10 greatest public health achievements in the U.S. in the 20th century. Removing the ability of local governments to allow these policies will harm the public’s health.”
But MAHA lawmakers are going after public health infrastructure more broadly: Consider SB 172 in Kansas. The legislation would prohibit schools from sending home a child who was exposed to an infectious or contagious disease, unless a local public health official issued an isolation or quarantine order. But Kansas is simultaneously working to weaken the power of local public health officials - for example, last year lawmakers overrode a veto from Governor Laura Kelly to enact SB 29. This new law revokes the ability of state and local health officials to prohibit public gatherings as a way to prevent the spread of infectious or contagious diseases. The law also allows for litigation against health officials tied to any isolation or quarantine recommendations.
There’s also SB 263 in Tennessee. The legislation calls for prohibiting the enforcement of any public health mandates or recommendations that come from the World Health Organization, World Economic Forum, or the U.N. Lawmakers in Iowa and Georgia also are considering bills which would erode local public health authority.
Imposing Ideological Control over Communities
Immigration
LSSC continues to track a significant amount of immigration preemption this year, though the level of activity has plateaued from the shocking highs of 2025. Our team is currently tracking 86 immigration-related preemption measures, and about two-thirds of them are bills that carried over from 2025. As we reported earlier this year, the vast majority of immigration bills break out across three categories:
Requiring local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities (often via the 287(g) program), and/or prohibiting sanctuary policies;
Imposing punitive provisions on local governments that move forward with sanctuary policies even if the state has a ban in place; and
Imposing burdensome reporting requirements on localities, such as detailing cost breakouts spent on undocumented immigrants.
Against the backdrop of authoritarian-sanctioned violence in cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles, the most concerning immigration-related preemption trend in 2026 are measures forcing localities to cooperate with federal authorities. Some of these measures include:
Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed SB 76 into law in early March. The sweeping bill mandates schools, local law enforcement, and local governments comply with federal immigration authorities.
In Missouri, SB 1265 would impose staggering daily fines on any municipalities embracing sanctuary policies; requires all employers throughout the state to deploy e-verify tools to check the citizenship of employees; empowers local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws; and makes it a felony to provide support to undocumented people.
Anti-LGBTQ+
LSSC is tracking over 100 anti-LGBTQ+ preemption bills this session. These bills cross an array of areas - from schools and sports to municipal nondiscrimination ordinances - but they’re all similar in that they seek to impose an anti-LGBTQ+ ideology on communities, while degrading the dignity and humanity of queer people.
Iowa and Idaho are home to two of the most sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ preemption bills. Last year, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill removing gender identity from the state’s civil rights law - the first time a state has ever removed protections from a class. Lawmakers then rolled out a preemption bill which would ban municipalities from keeping gender identity nondiscrimination protections on the books. That became law in early March, rolling back gender identity protections across 13 municipalities and one county. Lawmakers in Idaho are pushing a more sweeping bill which would ban localities from having both sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination protections. If enacted, the policy would remove LGBTQ+ protections from 12 municipalities across the state.
States are even using preemption to go after symbols affirming LGBTQ+ equality. Idaho passed a measure essentially banning Pride flags last year; and this year lawmakers are considering a follow-up bill which imposes a stiff penalty of $2,000 per day against municipalities flying an unapproved flag. The measure is a direct response to Boise, where the city council had voted to make the Pride flag the municipality’s official flag in an attempt to work around the state law. In Tennessee, lawmakers are considering a bill which wouldn’t just ban Pride flags - it would also ban acknowledgement of Pride Month or other LGBTQ+-affirming events across public institutions.
Acknowledging people’s pronouns remains an obsessive focus of some lawmakers - at least seven states are moving bills this year related to either banning usage of proper pronouns, and/or protecting those who refuse to use an individual’s preferred pronouns. Those states include Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin.
There are also preemptive measures in Kansas’ SB 244 - perhaps the highest-impact anti-trans bill passed in quite some time. The law gained significant media attention because it promptly invalidated the drivers’ licenses of thousands of transgender Kansans. But the discriminatory law also bans trans people from using restrooms in government buildings - and allows anyone to sue a transgender person if they suspect them of violating that law.
Rewriting the Rules for Participating in Our Democracy
Elections & Democracy
President Trump is loudly advocating to restrict voting rights - he has called on lawmakers to nationalize elections and ban mail voting; and has spread false claims of non-citizen voting as a reason to pass the restrictive SAVE America Act. The president doesn’t actually have any authority to nationalize elections or control voting methods - that power rests with states. But it appears many states are listening: our team is tracking 137 preemption-related bills as of March - that’s two-thirds more than the 81 bills we tracked in all of 2025.
One of the most aggressive ways state lawmakers are looking to mirror the president’s restrictive voting priorities are through bills that curtail access to the ballot - whether by rolling back absentee and vote by mail, and/or instituting strict documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) and ID requirements for both registering and voting. Changes to mail voting requirements could be particularly felt across Western states, where voters who live in rural communities rely on mail voting. For instance, states including Montana, Utah, and Colorado all saw a supermajority of ballots cast in 2024 come via mail ballots. It would impact voters in Alaska, where nearly 80 percent of communities are not connected to roads and the 10-day grace period for ballots is critical due to the state’s expansive terrain.
Lawmakers in more than half of the states are advancing bills to curtail mail and absentee voting. Some states have already enacted restrictive measures into law - in Ohio, SB 293 is now in effect and requires all mail ballots to be received by the time polls close on Election Day. Tennessee also has a new law on the books this year - SB 367 raised the threshold age for absentee status from 60 to 65. Arizona lawmakers are considering a bill which would eliminate the state’s permanent absentee voter list. Under HCR 2001, voters would need to provide DPOC and a specific mail address ahead of each biennial general election. A number of other states are considering rolling back the timeframe for mail ballots to be received - including West Virginia, Illinois, and Alaska. Alaska’s bill is particularly troubling given how many voters across the rural state rely on the mail to get their ballots submitted.
A number of states also are advancing stringent DPOC and voter ID laws - even though the National Voter Registration Act already requires all eligible voters to affirm their citizenship under penalty of perjury. Research shows that married women, the elderly, young people, Hispanic voters, low-income people, and active duty military personnel and their families are those most likely affected by stricter DPOC requirements. But governors in South Dakota and Utah recently signed bills which include significant DPOC requirements; and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has similar legislation on his desk.
States also are scaling back how communities can elect their leaders - in March, Ohio became the 19th state to ban ranked choice voting; Indiana also enacted a ban this year. Other states with active bills pending to ban RCV include Maine and Michigan.
For more information on specific preemption trends, please visit www.supportdemocracy.org.