This message guide will help you explain how existing and new state preemption has left local governments and people vulnerable to the pandemic, worsened inequities, and weakened efforts to protect public health. It also outlines what must be done to protect local democracy.
Read MoreAs the COVID-19 pandemic spreads and states reopen, local elected officials and advocates are asking what power they have to help their communities across a range of policies, including housing and homelessness needs, worker needs, and broadband access. Local advocates and officials could save crucial time as they determine what they can do locally if their state legislature or governor asserted and clarified local authority pertaining to key policies around housing, worker protection, and broadband access. This model resolution is geared towards helping local officials and advocates push their legislature and governor to do just that.
Read MoreAs part of the Local Solutions Support Center’s ongoing efforts to help local leaders understand and deploy their authority to address their communities’ needs, we have produced this memo outlining legal possibilities and prohibitions.
Read MoreAs the coronavirus pandemic spreads, local elected officials and advocates alike are asking what they can do for their communities across a range of policies — including to ensure that everyone has broadband Internet access available.
Read MoreAs the coronavirus pandemic spreads, local elected officials and advocates alike are asking what they can do for their communities across a range of policies—including those that respond to our pressing housing and homelessness needs.
Read MoreAs the coronavirus pandemic spreads, local elected officials and advocates are asking what they can do for their communities. This brief guide can help you determine whether your community has the authority it needs to adopt a particular policy. This guide is not intended to be legal advice; rather it aims to encourage communities, city attorneys, and advocates to examine the possibilities for creative local action.
Read MoreLSSC is partnering with the National League of Cities to publish Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century. This groundbreaking new framework lays out a vision for rebalancing state and local relations, and provides model constitutional language to encourage legal reform. But the Principles are just the beginning of a longer-term conversation necessary to ensure Americans can fully participate in local democracy, and that cities are truly equipped to advance innovative and tailor-made solutions to local problems.
Read MoreIn a new white paper by Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) and True North Research, Evan Vorpahl and Lisa Graves 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.
Read MoreBetween January and June 2019, state legislatures across the nation continued a troubling trend of passing more laws forbidding or “preempting” local control over a large and growing set of public health, economic, environmental, and social justice policy solutions. Read LSSC’s full report here.
Read MoreIn the May 15th, American Prospect article, Blue City Challenge: Clawing Back Power from Red States, LSSC Director, Kim Haddow speaks about how conservatives have been using the preemption tool for several decades. Unleash Local is supporting a bill in the Louisiana State legislature, introduced by Democratic State Representative Royce Duplessis, that would overturn wage preemption once and for all. The bill would also allow cities to develop their own sick leave and vacation plans, which have also been barred by the state. The bill “doesn’t mandate anything,” Duplessis says, it “just lifts the restrictions,” though he concedes it’s “an attempt to give people an opportunity to have a living wage, just to have a fair chance.”
Read MoreOn April 25, 2019, in Charlottesville, Virginia, Circuit Judge Richard Moore ruled that the statues of prominent Confederate figures Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are considered war memorials protected by state law. Back in 2017, Charlottesville was the site of a rally where white nationalists protested the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee. A clash between protesters and counter-protesters turned violent, resulting in the death of Heather Heyer, which sparked a national debate over these controversial statues.
On Legal Talk Network’s Lawyer 2 Lawyer podcast, host Craig Williams is joined by Richard Schragger, professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Nestor Davidson, faculty director of the Urban Law Center at Fordham University’s School of Law, to take a look at this recent ruling, the controversy over the removal of Confederate statues and what is next in this legal fight.
The Colorado legislature has approved a bill repealing a 20-year-old state law that banned cities and counties from enacting a local minimum wage higher than the state’s minimum wage. The bill now heads to Governor Jared Polis, and his signature would make Colorado the first state in the nation to repeal this type of restrictive preemption law. The measure restores the ability of local municipalities across the state to raise minimum wages and align them with local – and often rising – costs of living.
Read MoreThe Website, Next City published an article entitled, Colorado Bill Tries Again to Give Cities Minimum Wage Power on March 20, 2019. LSSC Director, Kim Haddow is quoted as Colorado is trying to pass Bill HB18-1368, Local Control Of Minimum Wage that would allow a unit of local government to enact laws increasing the minimum wage within its jurisdiction.
Searchable Map Highlights Prominent Examples of Local Affordable Housing Efforts Blunted by Preemption #EqualHousing
Read MoreA mapping tool developed by the Local Solutions Support Center brings together research from Grounded Solutions Network, the Partnership for Working Families, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), the National Fair Housing Alliance, and the Urban Law Center, to document state preemption of inclusive and equitable local housing policies.
Read MoreThe New Republic published an article entitled “How Red States Stifle Blue Cities” on September 26, 2018 about how Republican statehouses have passed a raft of preemption bills to prevent cities from raising the minimum wage, strengthening gun control, and more.
Read MoreThe LSSC partnered with the National League of Cities to place a joint op/ed, Let the Mayors Lead, co-authored by Brooks Rainwater, Director of the Center for City Solutions and Nestor Davidson, Director of Fordham University’s Urban Law Center.
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