Exploring Trends in State Preemption in the 2024 Legislative Session
State lawmakers are continuing to abuse preemption to weaken our democracy. The southeastern U.S. is an acute hotspot this legislative season, with lawmakers in Florida and Tennessee continuing the trends they began last year to use preemption as a means of enriching corporate special interests at the expense of working people, and propping up racist and inequitable laws designed to harm communities and take power away from people. This memo from Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC), the hub dedicated to defending and advancing local democracy, details the trends our team is tracking during the first three months of the 2024 legislative season.
State Snapshots
Florida
Florida lawmakers made one thing crystal clear this session: They value big corporations and the special interest lobbyists clustered around the capitol in Tallahassee far more than they care for the average Floridian worker or child.
Legislators continued an aggressive preemption agenda this year, passing bills that steamroll local government and the voice of the voter at every turn. They embraced a cruel new law that eradicates local policies across the state requiring heat breaks for outdoor workers – coming off of the hottest year on record. Not content with forcing workers to toil in dangerous heat without a break, lawmakers also rolled back child labor laws. The legislature also strengthened a sweeping preemption law, originally passed last year, that allows corporations to sue local governments over local policies that harm their bottom line.
For lawmakers looking to turn back the clock with the eradication of heat breaks and commonsense child labor laws, there was no incentive to stop there. Legislators also passed a bill trampling local ordinances that would require a set number of EV chargers in new construction projects. It all adds up to a case study in how and why lawmakers use abusive preemption: Taking power away from people and communities to appease corporate donors.
Tennessee
Tennessee state lawmakers abuse preemption in even more overtly racist ways. For the second year in a row, lawmakers deployed abusive preemption with the explicit intent of upholding white supremacy and silencing the voices of voters in cities like Nashville and Memphis. Consider the Tyre Nichols Driving Equality Act, which the Memphis City Council passed unanimously last year in the wake of Nichols’ death at the hands of Memphis police officers following a traffic stop. Local officials intended for the measure to address the types of infractions which allow police officers to initiate traffic stops.
Lawmakers in the capitol responded with ferocity: Both chambers passed broad legislation that not only overrode the Tyre Nichols Driving Equality Act, but also forbade any other municipality from enacting any type of policy that prevented law enforcement from taking what they deem to be “all necessary steps” in preventing and responding to crime. Advocates succeeded in narrowing the legislation to apply only to traffic stops, though Governor Bill Lee did sign the measure into law last week.
This is not happening in a vacuum: Last year, Tennessee lawmakers wiped out local community oversight boards charged with tracking allegations of police misconduct. And this year, lawmakers are thumbing their noses at the voters who overwhelmingly returned State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson back into office. The two were expelled last year - on a party-line vote - after they protested in favor of more gun control in the wake of a deadly Nashville school shooting. Lawmakers are now considering legislation that would ban local governments from returning to office lawmakers removed for so-called “disorderly behavior.”
Kentucky
Lawmakers in Kentucky leaned into preemption to void local measures banning source-of-income discrimination in housing in Louisville and Lexington. The local measures are meant to protect renters who may need to use Section 8 vouchers or other types of public assistance to secure safe and sustainable housing.
The legislature passed HB 18, which prohibits local municipalities from adopting or enforcing measures like those in Louisville and Lexington. Governor Andy Beshear vetoed the legislation, noting that it would harm those often disproportionately impacted by preemption - including people with disabilities, the elderly, and families with low incomes. The legislature swiftly overrode Beshear’s veto.
Issue-Specific Preemption that LSSC is Monitoring
Education (including book + curriculum bans and anti-LGBTQ+ measures)
A number of state legislators continue to advance preemption policies aimed at making schools less safe and welcoming for LGBTQ+ students, particularly transgender youth. Many of these bills also undermine the ability of schools to provide an honest and accurate education about our nation’s history - the good and the bad; and many bills are aimed at banning books.
Many legislators are still singularly focused on mean-spirited and discriminatory efforts to ban transgender kids from participating in school sports, a trend we dug into in a recent white paper released with A Better Balance and the Equality Federation. North Carolina lawmakers overrode a veto from Governor Roy Cooper last summer to enact such a ban; while other states currently considering similar legislation include Maryland, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
A number of states - including Idaho, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma - are advancing measures similar to Florida’s sweeping “Don’t Say Gay or Trans'' law, curtailing instruction and discussion of LGBTQ+ people and families in schools. Lawmakers in states including Arizona, Missouri, New Hampshire, Virginia, and West Virginia have tried to advance bills banning schools from recognizing student’s preferred pronouns and, in some cases, requiring schools to notify parents if children identify as LGBTQ+. This is particularly dangerous for youth who may not feel like their home is a safe environment in which to come out. Other states - like Georgia and South Carolina - continue to double-down on efforts to allow book banning.
Housing
A number of states continue to threaten the ability of many of their own residents to have a safe and stable home through abusive preemption bills - many of which line the pockets of corporations and landlords by eradicating local tenant protections and making affordable housing more difficult to keep.
Last year lawmakers in Florida enacted a new preemption law that wiped out an estimated 46 tenant protection ordinances in 35 cities across the state. This year, LSSC is again tracking nearly a dozen bills nationwide related to housing preemption - and once again, Florida led the pack. Lawmakers in the Sunshine State advanced SB 280, a measure which limits local regulation of short-term rentals. Governor Ron DeSantis also signed into law a new measure that bans sleeping in public spaces across the state - essentially targeting the unhoused. This measure was pushed by the Cicero Institute, which has worked in recent years to advance similar bills in Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
Criminal Justice
State lawmakers continue to wield preemption as a means of weakening local measures meant to address safety and justice. Last year’s attacks on popular elected (and often re-elected) local prosecutors - at the hands of both legislatures and governors - continues this year. A bill in Missouri would take power away from elected local prosecutors by creating a partisan process in which the governor assumes the authority to appoint a special prosecutor if they don’t like a particular local prosecutor; essentially side-stepping the prosecutor put in place by local residents. Missouri lawmakers also are trying to weaken the authority of civilian oversight boards for local police departments, following the lead of neighboring Tennessee after lawmakers in that state gutted local police accountability review boards last year. Florida lawmakers tried to advance a similar bill.
Other bills LSSC is tracking this session include an attempt in Arizona to ban local municipalities from reducing police funds; to a stunning effort in Tennessee to preempt local extreme risk protection orders (which allow loved ones or law enforcement to ask a court to temporarily block a person in crisis from accessing guns) - and make it a misdemeanor to enforce federal extreme risk protection orders.