The Sabin Center Cities Team Launches a Report and a Website to Help Cities & Local Governments Navigate State Law in Climate Action

Today, Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law releases a new report titled Navigating State Law in Local Climate Action. The report, authored by the Sabin Center’s Cities Climate Law Initiative (CCLI), provides state-by-state information, resources, and analysis to unpack key state-local preemption issues in nineteen states. 

Local governments are well positioned to lead the fight against climate change by taking actions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promote renewable energy resources, and otherwise advance climate mitigation and adaptation goals. However, state governments have the authority to hinder those efforts by preempting local laws. State law prevails – even in states which grant robust local power – when state law expressly preempts local authority, occupies the entire field of regulations and leaves no room for local authority, or conflicts with a local law.  A recent trend, sometimes referred to as “New Preemption”, points to more aggressive, reactionary, and deregulatory action against larger, often progressive cities, as a strategy to obstruct local climate action. 

In the face of these obstacles, cities and local governments have options to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This new report highlights the landscape within which those action can take place in the following nineteen states: 

For each state covered, the report highlights the sources of local authority to regulate and the limits imposed by the state, including constitutional and statutory delegations of home rule authority, a catalog of current state laws that may preempt local climate action, leading case law on home rule, ongoing litigation, building codes, legal considerations related to energy utilities, among other relevant information and resources: 

This resource is intended to help local governments, policymakers, city attorneys, academics, advocates, and other stakeholders craft resilient climate policies, anticipate and respond to preemption challenges, and mobilize public engagement. 

The full report, as well as individual chapters focusing on each of the states above, is available to download here. In addition, CCLI has launched a platform on its website (www.citiesclimatelaw.org) to enable easier navigation of each state’s resources.