New White Paper: 'The State Strikes Back: Death Star 2.0 Preemption'

Jackson is Mississippi’s capital and its largest Black-majority city.   Since 2016, Mississippi has taken control of the city’s airport, moved to remove ownership of its water system, and, most recently, carved out largely white neighborhoods in the city into a state-controlled police and criminal-justice district.  This year the Texas state legislature passed HB 2127, a statute that would sweepingly prohibit local governments from passing laws covered by the state’s codes on agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, local government, natural resources, occupations, or property, unless specifically authorized by state law. This statute essentially seeks to eliminate constitutional home rule in the state. Additionally, a growing number of states are curbing the power of—and even removing from office—locally elected prosecutors.

These examples underscore that the “new preemption” is moving in a dangerous new direction, which this White Paper is naming “Death Star 2.0.” States are not just targeting specific local policy decisions (preempting minimum wage, for example) or even punishing local governments and officials in preemption conflicts. Rather, states have begun to impair or eradicate whole realms of local authority entirely, specifically targeting policies that protect communities of color, immigrants, workers in low-wage industries, and other vulnerable residents. This White Paper explains the historical underpinnings of this rapidly emerging trend, the forms this preemption is taking, and the reasons why structural change to bolster local authority in the face of this new preemption is ever-more critical.