Reports, Academic Research & Maps

This map focuses on four of these policies: protections against source-of-income discrimination, the regulation of short-term rentals, inclusionary housing programs, and rent regulation.

Increasingly, corporations and right-wing state legislators are successfully driving preemption bills that make it harder for women and women of color in particular to work with their local governments to build communities that work for them and their families.

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.

LSSC’s latest report, Protecting Local Democracy: 2023 Legislative Session Overview, explores all the preemption trends that played out in states across the country this past year. The report also highlights what issues advocates are most concerned about as we head into 2024.

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.

In a new paper from Local Solutions Support Center, Curricular Preemption: The New Front of an Old Culture War, we discuss the growing trend of curricular preemption and its impact on local school districts.

This resource provides advocates with the research and data they need to document the harmful consequences of preemption and advocate for repealing inequitable preemption laws.

The second edition features a series of articles that explore how some states preempted local authority across a host of issues during the pandemic.

A new white paper from LSSC explores in more detail how some state legislatures are using preemption to undermine local control of police budgeting, accountability, and management.

This new report highlights how state lawmakers in the Midwest have abused preemption to impede progress on a variety of issues that would improve the economic security and well-being of residents. 

14 authors were tasked with working as advocate-researcher co-authors to produce short articles highlighting recent research findings, emerging issues, and data and research needs across seven policy fields.

A new report, Preempting Progress, examines how state interference in local policymaking prevents people of color, women, and low-income workers from making ends meet in the South.

This guide highlights the scale of the broadband problem (before and during the pandemic) and important policies that local governments can consider in the short and long-term to increase access to broadband.

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

In this white paper, we document how Juul has flooded statehouses with lobbyists to advance T-21 legislation – bills to raise the purchase age of tobacco to 21, but that include poison pill measures preempting local governments from further regulating tobacco products.