On Sept. 1, a bill with the pithy title ā€œAn Act Relating to State Preemption of and the Effect of Certain State or Federal Law on Certain Municipal and County Regulationā€ will take effect in Texas. The bill ā€”signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in Juneā€”was given a much zippier name by its opponents: ā€œDeath Star,ā€ because it could obliterate whole swaths of city and county laws and regulations.

ā€œBasically, itā€™s the greatest transfer of power away from the public and into the hands of a few people in Austin that weā€™ve ever seen,ā€ said Texas state Rep. John Bryant. ā€œThis handful of people that want to control our state do not want cities acting in their own interests. They do not want any city making policies that get in the way of their ideological and financial objectives.ā€ Maybe Bryant and other Death Star critics are rightā€”but weā€™ll know how big the transfer of power truly is only after everyone figures out what the bill actually says and does, and only if it survives the legal challenges several of Texasā€™ biggest cities have already filed against it.

The goal of Death Star is simple. The deeply conservative Texas Legislature wants to effectively deny citiesā€”the stateā€™s large Democratic-leaning cities, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin in particularā€”the ability to pass local laws and regulations in eight major policy areas: agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, natural resource law, occupational law, and property law. And it does all this in a bill that is 10 single-spaced pages long, nearly one page of which is legislative findings, not actual law. Which is where the problems begin.

Death Star does not aim to affirmatively lay out regulations at the state level; it simply attempts to thwart local regulations. Thus, the entirely of the provision that denies local governments the ability to regulate the insurance industry is just this: ā€œUnless expressly authorized by another statute, a municipality or county may not adopt, enforce, or maintain an ordinance, order, or rule regulating conduct in a field of regulation that is occupied by a provision of this code. An ordinance, order, or rule that violates this section is void, unenforceable, and inconsistent with this code.ā€ Thatā€™s it. It then repeats this language across all the various other fields, although in a few cases it adds an extra clause or two to identify specific subfields it really wants to make sure are preempted.

Problematically, as the city of Houston points out in the lawsuit it filed last month challenging Death Star as violating the Texas Constitution, these provisions lack any clarity. The new law, for example, never defines what it means for state law to ā€œoccup[y] a provision of this codeā€ outside of the few explicit provisions noted above, making it very hard for cities to know what regulations are at risk. Houston has argued that it is unconstitutionally vague and that the Texas Constitution and state Supreme Court decisions have made this sort of ā€œfield preemptionā€ā€”in which the state does not replace local law with a state alternative but simply declares whole areas ineligible for local rule makingā€”unconstitutional under Texas law. San Antonio joined the lawsuit late last month.

The sweeping language of Death Star is likely seen more as a feature than a bug by the billā€™s drafter, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, who all but brags that it is going to fall to the courts to decide what regulations are actually preempted. Importantly, the bill contains a provision that allows any individual or trade association to challenge any local regulation in courtā€”and, if they prevail, requires the county or city to pay all the challengerā€™s costs and ā€œreasonableā€ legal fees. Those who challenge a regulation and lose have to pay those costs only if the court finds the challenge ā€œfrivolous,ā€ leaving the city to pay its own costs (though not those of the challenger) if it wins cases the courts see as non-frivolous. So, county and city governments assume financial risk if they attempt to defend a regulation and clarify Death Starā€™s reach.

e; added bolding (which wasnā€™t in the original) and italicization (which was)

  • Raven FellBlade@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Theyā€™re dismantling everything that stands in their way now because the writing is on the wall for them in the long term politically and ideologically. They are losing, they only maintain power through gerrymandering and even that canā€™t last forever.

    • orclev@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Gerrymandering already isnā€™t enough. Itā€™s why theyā€™ve also been doing everything they can to disenfranchise voters as well as engaging in voter suppression tactics. Then thereā€™s the most recent twist which is all the voter fraud, election fraud, and the attempts to subvert the electoral college that all the current trials are about (most prominently in Georgia). They do know the writing is on the wall because their core platform, the thing that has remained constant ever since Nixon is racism, and as the baby boomers who grew up during desegregation die off thatā€™s just not a winning platform anymore. Sure thereā€™s still racism and racists, but theyā€™re just a bitter angry minority, they donā€™t have the numbers to support a major political party anymore. Itā€™s why the GOP is frantically trying to pivot to an anti-LGBT platform, they figure thatā€™s a minority group they can get traction with oppressing.