December 4 - Preemption
Repealing Preemption
*FREE LIVE FOR IMLA MEMBERS! CLE available to Kitchen Sink Subscribers and in some cases to others but fees may apply.
As recent reports by the Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) and the National Employment Law Project (NELP) have highlighted, state legislatures around the country are increasingly abusing their power to preempt local authority on a wide range of issues. In response to the recent onslaught of preemption, local officials, local residents, and advocates have mounted increasingly coordinated and effective campaigns to defend their local authority from new preemption bills, and in 2019, a new trend emerged. Coalitions, in partnership with state policymakers, are pushing to repeal existing preemption and thus recover local power. Learn about successful campaigns in Colorado to repeal preemption in 2019, lessons learned for building effective preemption repeal campaigns, and recommendations for drafting strong preemption repeal bills.
Speaker: Laura Huizar
Laura Huizar joined the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in 2015. She supports NELP’s efforts to create a good jobs economy by providing legal and technical assistance to local, state, and national campaigns to raise the minimum wage and to enforce federal overtime regulations and other protections.
Her work has included supporting campaigns around the country defending local policies from state preemption, expanding local authority to adopt pro-worker policies, and contributing to research on the abuse of preemption. As Legal Director of the Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) Joint Project with NELP, Laura oversees and coordinates the LSSC’s legal work focused on deploying proactive legal strategies to help communities resist and reverse state preemption laws.
Laura’s background includes a variety of social and economic justice-related work, including an Equal Justice Works Fellowship at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, where she represented low-wage immigrant workers in litigation and assisted community groups seeking policy change. As a Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, Laura supported litigation and conducted legal research related to debtors’ prisons, the school-to-prison pipeline, and other major sources of racial injustice in the U.S. Before attending law school, Laura worked for JUNTA for Progressive Action in New Haven, Connecticut, focusing on local economic development and immigrant worker advocacy.
Valued for her expertise on living and minimum wage and immigrant worker issues, Laura has been quoted by Bloomberg, New Republic, CBS News, Newsweek, and more. Laura is admitted to practice law in New York and the District of Columbia.