2022 End-of-Session Report: 'Undermining Democracy'

This year, the upward trend of abusive preemption continued to skyrocket: LSSC tracked over a thousand bills across all 50 states. These bills limited local decision-making across the board, from environmental regulation to gun safety to worker pay. For instance, Arizona, Florida, and Okahloma each passed three different laws targeting the LGBTQ community, with over 40 similar bills proposed in other states. We also know that certain states continue to be the most egregious offenders of abusive preemption: Arizona lawmakers, for example, proposed over 30 preemption bills and eventually passed 18 such bills into law this year.  

In this report, Undermining Democracy: How Far-Right State Lawmakers & Corporations Are Abusing Preemption to Take Power Away from People, LSSC tracks how abusive preemption has been used by state lawmakers at the behest of corporations to undermine local authority, particularly on public health authority, LGBTQ rights, and democracy & voting rights.