“The Death Star now operational,” Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), wrote in a statement posted to X back in July, shortly after a judge upheld The Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, Texas’s landmark preemption law, commonly referred to as the “Death Star,” which Burrows authored and passed in 2023. Though it was enacted more than two years ago, the TRCA could not take affect until this lawsuit was resolved this past summer.
Now, only a couple of months after the TRCA took effect in Texas, the significance of its impact is becoming more evident. This past week, on October 29, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an Austin-based think tank, filed a lawsuit that seeks to strike down 83 Dallas ordinances and regulations in violation of the TRCA.
In arguing that 83 local ordinances and regulations in Dallas are no longer permitted now that the Death Star law is in effect, TPPF’s lawsuit against the City of Dallas cites the city’s own legal counsel. “During a House Committee on State Affairs hearing on March 15, 2023, Laura Morrison, an assistant city attorney, testified on behalf of the City of Dallas in opposition to HB 2127,” notes TPPF’s lawsuit. “During her testimony, Representative Rafael Anchía asked Ms. Morrison to provide him with a list of city ordinances that would be affected by the bill.” TPPF’s lawsuit goes on to note that in April of 2023, Dallas officials provided Representative Anchía with a list of 133 city ordinances “that will be affected” by House Bill 2127, the Death Star legislation that would go on to pass.
“As the only effect of the TRCA is to invalidate preempted laws, the only possible way HB 2127 could affect the 133 listed city ordinances is to preempt them, rendering them void and unenforceable,” TPPF’s lawsuit explains. “That is, in trying to prevent HB 2127 from passing, the City of Dallas told Representative Anchía that at least the 133 ordinances and regulations listed in its memo would be preempted by state law if HB 2127 passed.”
“HB 2127 did pass and is now state law. Accordingly, the City of Dallas has admitted that the 133 city ordinances and regulations in its April 2023 memo are now preempted, void, and unenforceable,” the lawsuit continues. “More than two years later, after receiving notice from plaintiffs, the City of Dallas has repealed a handful of the more than 100 ordinances listed in the April 2023 memo.”
With its lawsuit, TPPF is seeking “a declaratory judgment that the Dallas ordinances and regulations listed in the April 2023 memo to Representative Anchía are preempted by the TRCA and therefore void and unenforceable, injunctive relief barring any future enforcement of those ordinances and regulations, and costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees.”
Dallas is the ninth most populous city in the U.S. and ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in this case would be significant in its own right. But don’t expect such Death Star-related lawsuits to stop with Dallas.