Handbook·State government

Preemption: when the state overrules your city

Explainer·Verified 2026-07-10

The answer

Preemption is when a state passes a law that overrides or blocks a city or county ordinance on the same subject, and it means your city council can vote unanimously for something and still lose, because the state legislature gets the last word. The folk model treats local government as the level closest to home and therefore most in control. On many high-profile issues, minimum wage, gun regulation, plastic bag bans, marijuana rules, paid sick leave, the state legislature can and does override the local decision entirely, regardless of how the city voted.¹

How it actually works

In 2016, Miami Beach passed a local minimum wage ordinance, phasing city wages up to $13.31 an hour by 2021, well above the Florida state minimum at the time. Business groups sued, arguing Florida Statute 218.077 already barred cities from setting their own minimum wage. In 2017, Florida's Third District Court of Appeal agreed and struck the ordinance down. Miami Beach appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which accepted the case in 2018 but then discharged jurisdiction in 2019, letting the appellate ruling stand permanently. The sequence shows how preemption actually plays out: a city passes something, the state's existing preemption statute, or a new one, gets invoked in court, and the courts, not the legislature directly, execute the override by ruling the local ordinance void.²

Who holds the power

Preemption power sits with the state legislature, which can act two ways: passing a new law that explicitly blocks a category of local ordinance going forward, or relying on an existing preemption statute that courts apply when a city tries to legislate in that space anyway. The state courts then enforce the preemption when it's challenged, meaning a city's only recourse is arguing in court that the state law doesn't actually cover what it did, an argument Miami Beach lost. Heading into the 2026 state legislative sessions, advocacy trackers counted more than 60 new preemption bills prefiled nationwide, with nearly three-quarters of them coming from just two states, Florida and Missouri, showing this is an active and geographically concentrated legislative strategy, not a settled or rare occurrence.³

Preemption is not inherently partisan or one-directional. Both parties have preempted local ordinances on different issues at different times, and states vary in how "home rule" is defined constitutionally, which changes how much default authority a city has before any specific preemption law targets it. Some preemption is longstanding and uncontroversial, like uniform statewide building or plumbing codes. The more contested recent wave concerns wages, guns, and social policy specifically.

Where you come in

City charters, home rule vs. Dillon's Rule. Whether your city has broad "home rule" authority or must ask permission for everything changes how vulnerable it is to preemption.
What your state legislature controls. The same body that can preempt your city also controls the process for repealing that preemption.
How to track a bill in your state legislature. Preemption bills are introduced and voted on well before they make local news.

Sources