A Session Like No Other: An Overview of 2021’s Unprecedented Wave of State Preemption Bills
Republican-led state legislatures unleashed a wave of preemption bills blocking, removing, or penalizing local authority in 2021 – a direct response to the pandemic, the growing movement for racial justice, and the presidential election.
Since 2011, conservatives have moved aggressively to limit local lawmaking, weaken local democracy, and block local policies intended to advance economic and racial equity. But this year’s torrent of preemption measures are markedly different – more pointedly political and racist in nature. This year’s state legislative session highlights clearly how preemption is part of the scaffolding of structural racism in America, and how – like voter suppression and gerrymandering – it’s used to maintain white supremacy across our institutions and keep BIPOC, women, LGBTQ people, and workers in low-wage jobs from gaining power.
The Local Solutions Support Center’s (LSSC) report “A Session Like No Other” 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 (the last full year of session prior to the pandemic). More than 70 of those bills came from Florida and Texas alone. View the report here.
Major trends include:
Bills advancing racially targeted and anti-transgender measures
Increasing state interference in local government operations
Attempts to block local efforts to address climate change
View a 1-pager with a By-the-Numbers look at key trends.
See LSSC’s full legislative tracker for the 2021 session.
