The City of Houston has filed a lawsuit against the Texas government, claiming that a recently passed law that would create regulatory consistency across the state violates the Texas Constitution.
As reported by The Dallas Express, the Texas Legislature passed HB 2127, which forbids municipalities and local governments from passing rules in contradiction to state law in several regulatory areas, including agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, local government, national resources, occupations, and property.
Called the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, Gov. Greg Abbott heralded the law, saying, “Texas is the economic envy of America. Today, I signed a law to provide a new hope to Texas businesses struggling under burdensome local regulations.”
While supporters suggested the law would enable businesses to thrive by reeling in some of the allegedly anti-business measures being passed in some cities, critics have claimed that it unduly infringes on the “home rule” of municipalities.
In the petition against the law, the City of Houston claimed:
“Crucially important, unlike the federal constitution, the Texas Constitution does not contain a supremacy clause that would make state law always supreme. Instead, it includes only a primacy clause, article XI, section 5, grounded in conflicts and tempered by its constitutional home rule provision, that allows state law to preempt laws enacted by constitutional home rule cities only when they directly and irreconcilably conflict with such local law, and then only to the extent of that conflict.”
The lawsuit also asserted:
“HB 2127 would effectively repeal Texas constitutional home rule, impermissibly expand the scope of state preemption of local law, and improperly shift the burden of disproving preemption to cities, in direct contravention of article XI, section 5 of the Texas Constitution and decades of the Texas Supreme Court’s preemption jurisprudence.”
The suit was filed with the help of a California-based left-leaning activist group called Local Solutions Support Center, which focuses on what they deem “abusive preemption.”
“Research shows that preemption legislation is often passed to exclude and harm BIPOC communities, LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, and working people,” the group’s website claims.
The organization has received money from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a major left-wing grant-giving organization founded by George Soros.
Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), HB 2127’s author, has criticized the lawsuit on Twitter, writing, “I am not surprised that leftist cities are working with activists from California to try and slow down the implementation of the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act. I have confidence this bill will become law, and help ensure Texas’ economy thrives for future generations.”
In response, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner claimed, “The Texas economy is thriving because of cities like Houston. Instead of focusing on name calling, would it not be better to govern from the center and respect the rights of cities and local units of government to represent their constituents.”
“HB 2127 violates the Tx Constitution,” Turner alleged.
Burrows denied that the law contradicts the Texas Constitution, pointing to Article 11, Section 5, which states, “No [city] charter or any ordinance passed under said charter shall contain any provision inconsistent with the Constitution of the State or of the general laws enacted by the Legislature of this State.”
“HB2127 simply enforces exactly what it says,” Burrows claimed on Twitter.
Houston is currently seeking a declaratory judgment against the bill that the law “is unconstitutional, void, and unenforceable.”