ASHVILLE — When a new energy infrastructure bill was introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly earlier this month, people could be forgiven for paying little attention. Compared to the legislature’s recent follies — an abortion bill that would out-Texas Texas, or a book-banning bill that would override the recommendations of school librarians, or a handgun bill that would let 18-year-olds carry a gun without a permit — an energy-infrastructure bill seems like a big yawn.
Thing is, almost nothing undertaken by the Tennessee General Assembly can be safely overlooked. That boring energy infrastructure bill, which passed the Tennessee Senate last Thursday, would let the state override local laws blocking fossil-fuel projects in their communities. In other words, if this bill becomes law, the state could allow an oil company to run a pipeline through a city over the objections of the city itself.
This may seem like a picayune matter with no relevance outside the state of Tennessee, but it’s exactly the kind of bill that ought to attract national attention — not because it’s happening in Tennessee but because it’s happening, or is poised to happen, in red-state legislatures across the country, according to the Climate Reality Project. Republicans are using rising gas prices as an opportunity to give the fossil-fuel industry whatever it wants in their states, even when their own cities have been trying to protect the environment and their people from that very industry.
Legislative pre-emption is part of a political ground war down here. These routine bills rarely rise to the level of national attention, but their presence explains as much about our national politics — and about what shapes our national elections — as any newly restrictive abortion law or newly lax gun bill does.
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Derived from the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, the doctrine of pre-emption allows a higher legal authority to override a law passed by a lower legal authority when the two are in conflict. It is deployed by both Republican and Democratic legislatures, though far more frequently by Republicans in the South, sometimes in unprecedented ways. Tennessee’s legislature uses pre-emption with abandon, even in cases where the state has no reasonable interest in the question. It’s the opposite of the Not In My Back Yard principle. Call it the To Hell With All Y’all Who Didn’t Vote For Me principle.
The infrastructure bill passed by the Tennessee Senate last week was expressly designed to respond to a grass-roots environmental effort that defeated a crude-oil pipeline in Memphis last year, as a report by WPLN News makes clear: “The Memphis situation alerted those folks in this industry to what could happen if planned projects … can be interrupted by municipalities somewhere along the way,” Kevin Vaughan, a Republican representative from Collierville, said during a subcommittee meeting.
That effort, led by Black activists and reported on extensively by the nonprofit news organization MLK50, blocked an oil company with an abysmal safety record from building a pipeline through the historic Black community of Boxtown. The Byhalia Connection pipeline was both a classic example of environmental racism and a dangerous threat to a fragile sand aquifer that provides drinking water to a million people.
In red states, here is what happens when blue cities pass regulations that Republican legislators disagree with: If Nashville passes a law designed to protect neighborhood homes from being turned into short-term rentals occupied by rotating hordes of drunk bridesmaids, the Tennessee General Assembly will introduce a bill that would make the city ordinance impossible to enforce. If the residents of Decatur, Ga., are considering a ban on gasoline-powered leaf blowers, the Georgia General Assembly will consider a bill that bans the banning of leaf blowers.
Not all such bills are voted into law — the leaf blower bill in Georgia is currently in limbo, and we can only hope that public pressure will kill the energy infrastructure bill in the Tennessee House this week, too — but the very existence of such bills has a chilling effect on county and municipal governments.
Thing is, almost nothing undertaken by the Tennessee General Assembly can be safely overlooked. That boring energy infrastructure bill, which passed the Tennessee Senate last Thursday, would let the state override local laws blocking fossil-fuel projects in their communities. In other words, if this bill becomes law, the state could allow an oil company to run a pipeline through a city over the objections of the city itself.
This may seem like a picayune matter with no relevance outside the state of Tennessee, but it’s exactly the kind of bill that ought to attract national attention — not because it’s happening in Tennessee but because it’s happening, or is poised to happen, in red-state legislatures across the country, according to the Climate Reality Project. Republicans are using rising gas prices as an opportunity to give the fossil-fuel industry whatever it wants in their states, even when their own cities have been trying to protect the environment and their people from that very industry.
Legislative pre-emption is part of a political ground war down here. These routine bills rarely rise to the level of national attention, but their presence explains as much about our national politics — and about what shapes our national elections — as any newly restrictive abortion law or newly lax gun bill does.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Derived from the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, the doctrine of pre-emption allows a higher legal authority to override a law passed by a lower legal authority when the two are in conflict. It is deployed by both Republican and Democratic legislatures, though far more frequently by Republicans in the South, sometimes in unprecedented ways. Tennessee’s legislature uses pre-emption with abandon, even in cases where the state has no reasonable interest in the question. It’s the opposite of the Not In My Back Yard principle. Call it the To Hell With All Y’all Who Didn’t Vote For Me principle.
The infrastructure bill passed by the Tennessee Senate last week was expressly designed to respond to a grass-roots environmental effort that defeated a crude-oil pipeline in Memphis last year, as a report by WPLN News makes clear: “The Memphis situation alerted those folks in this industry to what could happen if planned projects … can be interrupted by municipalities somewhere along the way,” Kevin Vaughan, a Republican representative from Collierville, said during a subcommittee meeting.
That effort, led by Black activists and reported on extensively by the nonprofit news organization MLK50, blocked an oil company with an abysmal safety record from building a pipeline through the historic Black community of Boxtown. The Byhalia Connection pipeline was both a classic example of environmental racism and a dangerous threat to a fragile sand aquifer that provides drinking water to a million people.
In red states, here is what happens when blue cities pass regulations that Republican legislators disagree with: If Nashville passes a law designed to protect neighborhood homes from being turned into short-term rentals occupied by rotating hordes of drunk bridesmaids, the Tennessee General Assembly will introduce a bill that would make the city ordinance impossible to enforce. If the residents of Decatur, Ga., are considering a ban on gasoline-powered leaf blowers, the Georgia General Assembly will consider a bill that bans the banning of leaf blowers.
Not all such bills are voted into law — the leaf blower bill in Georgia is currently in limbo, and we can only hope that public pressure will kill the energy infrastructure bill in the Tennessee House this week, too — but the very existence of such bills has a chilling effect on county and municipal governments.
Opinion | The Boring Bill in Tennessee That Everyone Should Be Watching
Republicans are about freedom and small government only when they’re not the ones in control of the government.
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