Republicans intensify their assault on city governments
A new phase in the American tussle between state and local powers![]()
Conservative dogma once taught that local government reigned supreme. Politicians closest to constituents were best equipped to govern them, the argument went, and far-off centralised authority did nothing but meddle. Today, however, a Goldilocks principle of government has taken its place among Republicans, says Bennett Sandlin, the head of the Texas Municipal League, an advocacy group. “The federal government is big and bad, cities are small and bad, and somehow state government gets it just right.”
In the latest legislative session, which in many states is coming to a close, Republican statehouses have sought to bolster state power and undercut the role of cities in local politics. Two sweeping new bills that illustrate this shift await governors’ signatures in Texas and Florida. The Texas Regulatory Consistency Act bars municipal governments from enacting policy that goes beyond state law in eight areas: agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labour, natural resources, occupations and property. Any local laws that currently do, such as tenant and worker protections, will be voided. Business leaders are celebrating the change. Main Street shops have suffered enough from the pandemic and inflation, they argue; reducing the burden of arduous local policies should help.
Florida’s new legislation will also chill city lawmaking. Local Ordinances—as the bill is, ironically, called—authorises businesses to sue municipal governments over any law they deem “arbitrary or unreasonable” (no definition of these terms is laid out in the text). While a speedy “rocket-docket” court deliberates the case, in most circumstances the government will have to suspend the rule in question. And if the challenger wins, the city must repeal the ordinance. Last year Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, vetoed a previous version of the bill, arguing that it would lead to an onslaught of costly litigation. But legislators and business lobbyists think they have a better shot of securing the governor’s signature this time, as Mr DeSantis cultivates his conservative credentials in his push for the presidency.
Such wholesale gutting of local authority—called “super-pre-emption” by academics and “death-star pre-emption” by progressives—is new. But for decades state politicians of all stripes have chipped away at specific local ordinances to retain consistency across jurisdictions. A dozen or so years ago the nature of pre-emption started to change, as Republicans weaponised these powers to kill progressive initiatives in big cities, says Richard Briffault of Columbia Law School. Plastic-bag bans, gun controls, paid sick-leave mandates and minimum-wage rises were all axed by Republican legislatures or conservative courts. Model pre-emption bills were drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group, and passed from state to state.
More recently pre-emption bills have started to proliferate, many targeting LGBTQ folk, progressive prosecutors and abortion-seekers. According to non-profit groups, there were 140 in 2017. That number grew to 475 in 2021 and over 1,000 in 2022. Midway through this year’s legislative season the tally was already 650.
The assault is driven in part by changing demographics that jeopardise conservative dominance in the South. In recent years Democratic cities in Republican states have been flooded by new residents. Texas and Florida stand out. In the year to July 2022 seven of America’s ten fastest-growing big cities were in these two states. That feeds a nasty political tension.
State Republicans in both Texas and Florida emerged mightier from last year’s midterm elections. But many metropolitan areas leaned further left. In Texas Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for governor, received more votes in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio than the previous challenger to the Republican incumbent did in 2018. Last month a Democrat clinched an upset win to become mayor of Jacksonville, Florida’s largest city. Republican state politicians see liberal cities as a threat. Urban hubs generate large shares of state GDP, and economic power tends to beget political influence.
The legal jousting extends beyond Texas and Florida. But in some states, rather than merely blunting local authority, some lawmakers are stepping in to govern directly. In April Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s Republican governor, signed two bills that, respectively, increase the number of state cops patrolling the streets of Jackson, the state capital, and create a new state-run court district in the city. The NAACP, a civil-rights group, sued, alleging that the laws violate the 14th Amendment by imposing a “separate and unequal” justice system on the city’s mostly black residents. “They are looking to colonise Jackson,” the mayor told the Associated Press. The representative who proposed the bill lives two-and-a-half hours’ drive from the city.
Legislators in Georgia, meanwhile, have passed a law authorising a state commission to remove locally elected district attorneys from their posts. (Some suspect this will allow the state to punish Fani Willis, Fulton County’s chief prosecutor, for going after Donald Trump.) And on the national stage, in March Congress struck down a bill passed by the council of Washington, DC, for the first time in three decades. Andrew Clyde, a Republican from Georgia who proposed the scrapping, wants to dissolve the DC mayor’s office.
Some new laws could get tied up in court if critics claim they breach state constitutions. But, says Courtnee Melton-Fant of the University of Memphis, since local governments were granted no powers by the founding fathers, states are well within their rights to designate authority as they see fit. With super-pre-emption laws on the books, many cities and towns will struggle to function as laboratories of democracy. They risk becoming forums of frustration instead. ■