Week in Action: What is preemption, and how can it impact Minnesota?

In case you missed it, this is from last Friday’s Week in Action email:

This week, we wanted to share a roundup of news stories about ‘statewide preemption.’ Across the country, local elected officials and community members are making progress on issues that help workers, LGTBQ folks, the environment, New Americans, small businesses, family farmers, and, well frankly, all of us.

In recent years, corporate interest groups started changing the rules of our democracy to block (or ‘preempt’) improvements in local laws. In cities like Birmingham, AL minimum wage workers won a pay increase, then had it cut back by the power of big business at their state capitol. Preemption is part of a national strategy to block local progress and it’s wrong.  

Why are we sharing this? Because corporate special interests are back at the capitol trying to tell local communities what they can and can’t do.

Here’s what we’re reading on preemption:

1. Fundamentals of Preemption

This article provides a grounding in terms. What is preemption? Check out the short summaries.

2. City Power in Minnesota

In Minnesota, Cities have the option to adopt a ‘Home Rule Charter’ which grants them more power over themselves. Check it out. When do city laws conflict with state laws and when are they preempted? Read about it  from the always reliable, straight-across-the-plate experts at House Research.

3. Cities as innovators 

This article makes the point that when cities are allowed to innovate, sometimes their policies make it to the national level. Stifling that innovation could be dangerous.

4. Trends in preemption

This Law Note provides a great grounding in state preemption of local laws across the country as well as the legal structures that either allow or create tension with them.

5. Preemption in Minnesota

We’ve talked a lot about how preemption impacts local workplace standards, but there’s more. Check out these articles on preemption of plastic bag bans and protections from frac sand mining and factory farming.

6. Corporate power in preemption

In this article, we follow a bill preempting paid sick leave laws from Scott Walker’s WI, to an ALEC conference, to 11 more states and the ironic existence of ACCE, ALEC’s weird, city-based cousin.

7. Preemption and public health

In Flint, MI, we’re still seeing what can happen when local authority is preempted. What are some other ways that preemption can impact public health? Check it out.

Stay tuned for actions on this as session plays out. Share this with your friends and let us know what you think. Do you like the deeper dive? That’s a wrap.

— Chris Conry and Kenza Hadj-Moussa