Welcome to the new era of preemption.
Climate change and the energy transition are driving a wave of state laws overriding local governments. No matter which party governs a state, city and county governments are increasingly finding themselves overpowered by statewide interests that cite economic development as justification for top-down control.
Republican-controlled states have been the most energetic in preempting local energy and environmental policies. Almost every GOP-governed state has banned local governments from restricting natural gas in buildings. Others have blocked outdoor heat protections for workers and even climate goals themselves.
Democratic-controlled states have become increasingly comfortable with the practice, too, overruling local control over wind and solar energy projects as well as restrictions that slow housing development.
Although states have preempted local laws for decades, experts say the newest wave is more intense. Broad preemptions driven by industry and ideological interests are now a normalized feature of the U.S. policy landscape.
Earlier this month,, for instance, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed legislation forbidding local limits on mining any “strategic and critical resource” — including anything deemed such by the White House. The Republican governor called it a “good economic opportunity” that is necessary for American global power.
“By streamlining extraction of rare-earth minerals right here in West Virginia … we’re stripping more leverage away from Beijing and giving it to the people of West Virginia,” Morrisey said before signing the bill.
But others are skeptical that preemptions deliver economic benefits. Pointing to the rise of national groups that pitch model bills across states, some say the trend illustrates’ state legislatures’ pliability in an era of polarized parties and big-money politics. State lawmakers themselves have become less likely to have come up from local government, too.
“The amount of debate around these issues is not as serious as it used to be,” said Christopher Goodman, a professor at Northern Illinois University who researches state preemption of local government.
“It’s more so: ‘We can do it, so we will do it,’” he said. “Which is a very different arrangement.”
Tallahassee tightens control
The preemption trend has been especially pronounced since 2010, when Republicans consolidated power in many states and cracked down on the last urban redoubts of Democratic control — overruling plastic bag bans and anti-discrimination rules allowing people to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender.
In the Trump era, those fights have turned more toward climate policy.
“Some preemption is clearly reactive or punitive,” said Amy Turner, director of the Cities Climate Law Initiative at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, which is tracking the spread of states preempting local climate laws.
In some cases, preemption might be justified, she said. For instance, preemptions of local restrictions on energy siting — increasingly common among Democratic states — supports an overall energy strategy of generating renewable energy, usually in rural areas.
On the other hand, she said, Republican states’ crackdown on blue cities’ climate policies often seem like ends unto themselves. “It’s not clear what bigger policy they tie to, other than perhaps maybe a general dislike of clean energy and energy efficiency and other sustainability measures.”
In Florida, for instance, Republican lawmakers have blended economic justifications and culture war rhetoric into an almost annual ritual of preemptions.
— In 2021, they limited local governments’ ability to block development of gas stations or to restrict natural gas utilities.
— In 2022, they blocked local oversight of contamination on agricultural land.
— In 2023, they forbade local governments from banning gas stoves.
— In 2024, they prohibited local EV charging regulations, circumscribed local planning powers and barred local workplace heat protections for outdoor workers.
Now, Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign Republicans’ latest climate-related preemption: legislation forbidding local governments from adopting net-zero emissions targets, along with any policies supporting such goals.
“Every time they preempt us, they take tools away, right?” Raquel Regalado, a Republican Miami-Dade County commissioner, said of Florida Republicans’ recent spree of overriding local policies.
Lawmakers in Tallahassee, she said, “don’t necessarily understand the unintended consequences.”
Lansing locks it down
State preemption has soared as the U.S. economy has grown more complex and interlinked. Policymakers regularly warn that businesses cannot navigate a “patchwork” of different rules.
Companies such as Uber and Airbnb successfully used that argument to preempt local regulations a decade ago, Goodman said. And increasingly, it’s been wielded by both parties at the state level on energy issues.
About a half-dozen states governed by Democrats recently have preempted local governments’ ability to block wind or solar energy projects. Some are still battling over it.
In 2023, over vocal opposition from Michigan townships, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other Democrats passed a law limiting what restrictions local governments can place on siting renewable energy projects.
They said it was necessary to meet the state’s climate goals, because a growing number of townships had adopted ordinances effectively banning wind and solar farms — the type of projects necessary to eliminate fossil fuels from the state’s power mix.
But rancor over the renewable siting law continues to reverberate across the state, in Lansing and in the courts.
In 2024, an initiative petition drive to let voters decide the fate of the renewable siting law fell short. And after retaking the state House, Republicans in 2025 tried repealing the law but were blocked by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Now, the Michigan Court of Appeals is weighing a lawsuit filed by nearly 80 Michigan townships that challenges the Michigan Public Service Commission’s implementation of the law.
Robert Thall, general counsel for the Michigan Townships Association, said preemption by the Legislature has become a growing concern for local governments, but no issue has disrupted local communities as much as the renewable siting law. (Individual townships, not the association, are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. But the group intervened and filed a brief in support.)
“We’ve never seen anything that blows a hole in zoning so much,” he said in an interview. “We have solar projects that are 8,000 acres. That’s like a third of the township that’s going to be solar panels.”
On the other side of the issue, a coalition of clean energy trade groups have defended the law, saying Michigan’s Legislature “anticipated and rejected [the townships’] desire to effectively veto renewable energy projects within their jurisdictions and thereby frustrate” the state’s climate goals.
Charleston clears the field
Elsewhere, state officials have cited broad goals — such as jobs and lowering prices — as reasons for taking away local power over energy and climate issues.
In West Virginia, where the governor and other top policymakers are trying to lure data centers to the state, they’ve said statewide standards are the best way to ensure the sector builds there. Last year, they passed HB 2014 to “make West Virginia the most attractive state in the country for data centers,” Morrisey said at the time.
The law says the Legislature intends to “occupy the whole field” of large data center regulations, including their on-site power generation. Cities and counties are forbidden from limiting them through zoning, ordinances, permitting or license requirements.
Local officials and activists argue that will endanger the state’s other burgeoning sectors, such as tourism, as new industrial development moves into places that locals say are too close to schools, neighborhoods and prime recreation areas.
“It bypasses local residents, environmental protections, local businesses, and public transparency,” wrote one group of local advocates, Tucker United, who oppose a data center planned for Tucker County.
That project, called the Ridgeline Facility, would be a 500-acre data center powered by an on-site gas-fired power plant as well as 1.3 gigawatts of solar, “one of the largest solar projects” in the country, according to its developer, Fundamental Data.
The company said a major reason for coming to West Virginia, along with its natural gas and transmission line access, was that the state “does not impose the local zoning, permitting, and regulatory layers that add cost and time to projects of this type elsewhere in the country.”
Opponents say that’s exactly the problem with the state’s approach.
“The people of West Virginia deserve to be included in all aspects of decision-making related to microgrids and/or data centers,” Tucker United wrote in comments to a recent state rulemaking.
“Tucker County is the gateway to the state’s premier attractions of Canaan Valley and Blackwater Falls, and we already have a thriving tourism economy that generates $90 million of revenue, but this will all be derailed by poor site selection for these facilities.”
Industry has been able to leverage affordability concerns into preemption laws, too.
In Maine, a long-running effort by Republicans and fuel companies to preempt local gas bans came to fruition in 2025.
The bill to “protect energy choice” had bipartisan backing. Even though a majority of Democrats opposed it, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills — who had signed an energy choice pledge during her 2022 reelection campaign — signed it into law.
The National Propane Gas Association hailed it as “an important industry milestone”: Maine’s policy meant a majority of the national propane market is now covered by laws preempting local bans.
Democratic Sen. Joe Baldacci, a co-sponsor of the legislation, told the Maine Morning Star that avoiding a patchwork of local bans ultimately could keep fuel prices lower.
Others aren’t so sure. Turner of the Sabin Center said such preemptions of local gas bans — which really boil down to overriding building codes — often rely on economic arguments that ignore certain factors, such as long-term costs or competing clean tech sectors.
That kind of motivated reasoning often undergirds preemption laws, she said.
“There’s no reason why it’s that difficult for [companies] to comply with these more place-based requirements,” she said.
Reporter Kylie Williams contributed to this report.
