The goal of Death Star is simple. The deeply conservative Texas Legislature wants to effectively deny cities—the state’s large Democratic-leaning cities, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin in particular—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: “Unless 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.” That’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.
The party of small government strikes again!
Anyone know what regulations they're trying to nullify?
I believe this also kills the mandatory water breaks in Dallas for construction workers due to this BS. Someone please fact check me if I’m wrong.
Not just dallas, but Houston and Austin, as well. San antonio was about to follow suit, until this passed.
I know at least one: the state GOP took umbrage with a police oversight act that Austin passed in May.
Edit: actually, the “Death Star” bill didn’t concern this. There was separate legislature proposed to block city-specific police oversight but it was unsuccessful thankfully.
In general the law is very vague, and apparently exactly what it covers will have to be argued in court. However if the city loses it will have to pay the other side's costs, while if it wins it will still pay its own fees unless the lawsuit is particularly frivilous.
Apparently there are some sections defined, eg over animal regulations (no doubt heavily in favour of the farming industry), but most of it leaves it completely open to interpretation. Interpretation that private interest groups can sue over, with the city paying.
It is too unconstitutionally vague and it is impossible to know which regulations would be affected other than the few specific ones mentioned in the bill.
It’s so they can apply it to anything they want and make exceptions for the things they don’t want to be affected.
Would this affect the water conservation and plastic bag laws in Austin?
Potentially, it isn't clear, but if someone sued the city would have to argue it in court.
If the city wins, they only get their legal expenses back if the suit is frivilous. If the city loses, they pay the claimants costs and legal expenses.
This law was written to make money for lawyers.
I'm not sure if anyone quite knows the entire scope of this law's impact. But I'm not in TX and just trying to wrap my head around all this from the distant lands of Colorado with limited time.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/southwest/death-star-texas-law-to-impact-pet-sales/
Houston:
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/03/houston-texas-lawsuit-local-control/
Ft Worth...
Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/other-voices/article277266483.html#storylink=cpy
Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/editorials/article277505038.html#storylink=cpy
Likely almost all of them.