City vs. State: The Story So Far

As cities flex their muscles in opposition to President Trump’s policies on everything from climate change to immigration and economic development, they face a serious obstacle: sweeping state efforts to preempt their authority.
These efforts date back well before Trump’s populist rise to power and span a whole host of critical issues—from states’ attempts to block local minimum wage increases to non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people to blanket bans on ordinances restricting fracking and guns.

Readers of CityLab will recognize plenty of examples of this anti-urban phenomenon. A new article in the Journal of Federalism by Lori Riverstone-Newell of Illinois State University offers a thorough overview of the rise of state preemption laws, drawing on recent examples of ongoing fights to assert city sovereignty. Here’s a summary of those key fights by policy area.

The “Fight For 15” movement is really about cities. By November 2016, Riverstone-Newell writes that nearly forty cities and counties had agreed to local increases in the minimum wage ranging from $8.50 to $15.75 an hour in states such as Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Maryland, Washington, and Maine (plus Washington, D.C.). Right now, 29 states set a higher minimum wage than the federal government and Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington passed statewide raises in 2016.