SLoG

Cities Move to Sever ‘Sister City’ Ties with Russian Governments When a Tech Company Tries to Be a Good Neighbor In Face of National Apathy, Local Groups Lead Rural Democratic Efforts The Red State Murder Problem Trash City: Here is Why NYC is So Filthy Public Meetings Thwart Housing Reform Where It Is Needed Most

Diverging Paths to Challenging Gerrymanders: Past Results and Possible Outcomes Ohio and New Jersey are far from the only states to have their maps challenged in partisan gerrymanders. In this second installment, I examine other ongoing cases. While two are based on specific prohibitions against partisan gerrymandering, the others are based on state constitutional provisions relating to elections or suffrage. Others still are based on even broader provisions, like equal prot

While some of our readers are deep in the weeds on redistricting after Rucho v Common Cause , the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision that allows the continuation of partisan gerrymandering in legislative redistricting, others may be less immersed, focusing on their home state, or monitoring a state that will be key in the 2024 Presidential election. Since we’re all about local and state, SALPAL’s inaugural State and Local Justice Fellow, Kathryn Randolph, provided an overview of w

Today's installment includes stories from outside the United States, along with domestic stories that touch on some of the most timely issues in the country right now. Check out these articles below: “Why Ukraine’s Best Hope Lies With Its Cities” The Brennan Center for Justice’s Local Election Officials Survey suggests that all is not well And “Florida is set to create a new police force to investigate elections” Tennessee is trying to take over a small, majority Black

The Little-Known Violence Prevention Tool Cropping Up in Cities Across the Country Barbershop Confrontations, Profane Signs and Despair: Pro-Biden and Alone in Rural What’s Wrong with Privately Funded ‘Post-Industrial’ Parks? America 25% of Missouri School Districts Now Provide Education Only Four Days A Week Also in Missouri, a “lawmaker seeks to stop residents from obtaining abortions out of state” And Idaho is using a similar tactic in its recent anti-trans bill, whic

Russell Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies Program, The Brookings Institution. This is an abbreviated and updated version of a recent article for Lawfare Efforts by former President Trump to reverse the 2020 election included a litigation blitzkrieg. As USA Today summarized : “[o]ut of the 62 lawsuits filed challenging the presidential election, 61 have failed.” Although dramatic, the assertion is somewhat misleading. Based on all judicial votes, Trump performed s

This week's Swan's Picks spans a range of topics and a number of regions, highlighting interesting and important stories in state and local news. “A Battle Over Building Codes May Be the Most Important Climate Fight You’ve Never Heard Of” High School Students in Florida Walk Out in Protest of the Don’t Say Gay law A School Segregation Lawsuit in New Jersey Returns to Court “What Happened When Oakland Tried to Make Police Pay for Misconduct” A new book about Kiryas Joel The

We're delighted that SLoGLaw partnered with Georgetown's Project on State and Local Government Policy and Law (SALPAL) for a panel featuring three of our Founding Editors--Sheila Foster, David Schleicher and moderator Meryl Chertoff-- together with blog contributor llya Somin and Dean Rose Cuison-Villazor. The January 27 event is particularly resonant this week. Meryl reports. Policy choices that impact mobility will have profound implications for our politics on the local,

“Red states are remaking the civil liberties landscape” Like here, where Texas targets trans kids …and Texas has important District Attorney elections coming up A Tennessee County spends its American Rescue Plan Act relief funds on jails And also in Tennessee, gerrymandering rips Nashville apart “Black City. White Paper.” The Philadelphia Inquirer takes a hard look at itself and how its “coverage has helped maintain discriminatory status quos within the city’s other ins

Welcome to the second installment of Swan's Picks! Catch up on some state and local news before the weekend arrives. The Florida House has passed a 15 week abortion ban …and Florida may also pass “the preemption bill to end all preemption bills” Since the mountain lions cannot, California NIMBYs consider whether direct democracy and “the mother of all NIMBY initiatives” can let them escape from state zoning laws …and they figure out a way to crush the dreams of thousands of

The Perils of Land Use Deregulation , my intervention in the land use/housing debate, has now been published by the University of Pennsylvania Law Review . This article has already attracted some critical attention , including by others on this blog , and—as with all things housing-related these days—the disagreement can be sharp. No one will mistake an 80-page article on land use for a tweet. But I suspect hot takes are inevitable because I challenge the anti-zoning consensu

Welcome to a new weekly blog feature on SLoG – a round-up of interesting, important and sometimes absurd stories in state and local government law news! We are delighted that Sarah Swan has offered to curate this feature, and will tag on a few that catch our eye here at the SLoG each week. The mountain lions will not save the NIMBYs in Woodside, California A Houston suburb votes on whether to become a “sanctuary city for the unborn:” The latest on Buckhead’s efforts to de-

Prosecutorial discretion has become a political battleground in state and local government. Among other initiatives, reform prosecutors in cities like San Francisco (where I teach) have claimed authority to categorically suspend enforcement of certain criminal laws on social-justice grounds. The San Francisco district attorney, for example, campaigned on declining prosecution of certain “quality of life” crimes. Similarly, just this this month, the newly elected Manhattan

In some academic circles, the phrase “local economic development incentives” has become an oxymoron along the lines of “military music” or “jumbo shrimp”. The urban economics literature is chock-a-block with studies that demonstrate that economic results of subsidies are at best mixed , and often reveal that state and local subsidies targeted at specific firms systematically overpay relative to the value that the attracted firms add to the local economy, underwrite locationa

We are delighted to share this post from a former Virginia legislative leader, David J. Toscano. This is the latest in our Field Dispatches series In her recent SLogLaw post “ Harrisburg COVID-19 Response Is No Model,” Meryl Chertoff provides a great explanation of Pennsylvania's response to the pandemic. Except for the use of a constitutional amendment pushed by Republicans in the Keystone state to constrain a Democratic governor, the dynamic is similar to what is occur

The pandemic lockdowns shed light on the state and relevance of our sidewalks. When we could go nowhere, we could walk, exercise, play, paint with chalk, dine, and more on them. Some sidewalks suddenly stop and lead to nowhere, although the streets continue. Others would lead somewhere, if they were not in complete disrepair. Others, while needed, do not exist. While we have paid little attention to sidewalks, they are key to making us healthier, greener, wealthier, and more

Following a practice that originated in Israel and Denmark before spreading more widely through Europe, several big “blue” cities in the USA now require or will soon require anyone entering and patronizing most public accommodations in their jurisdictions to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19. Because many of these regimes allow businesses to accept a smartphone app as proof of vaccination, and these apps are sometimes referred to as passports, this legal regime is

SLoGLaw Blog, and its human capital, will take a brief hiatus, now to January 4. We'll let half the country nurse mild COVID-19 omicron strain symptoms, and will return in 2022 with more of what we've been dishing out from the minds of our contributors. Meanwhile, we wish all of our readers good will, good health, and some well-earned rest, along with "ubuntu" --which translates to "I am, because you are" or "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanit

Recently, I’ve become fascinated by special districts, independent government units created for a specific, limited purpose. These districts act like a part of local government. They can collect property taxes and issue tax-exempt bonds. And they often provide basic services that we’ve come to expect from local government—things like fire protection or mosquito control. Yet, these entities also look like businesses. Special districts can come and go – they can be created or d

The ruling is mostly based on the Texas state constitution and probably will not affect the federal case challenging SB 8, currently before the Supreme Court. But it makes some notable points, nonetheless. This is a cross-post from the Volokh Conspiracy, December 9 Somin had more to say on SB 8 after the SCOTUS ruling last week see here and here On December 9, Texas state trial Judge David Peeples issued a decision in Van Stean v. Texas Right to Life , holding that the con