The Local Veto
Introduction Los Angeles can pass an ordinance, as can San Francisco, Sacramento, and hundreds of other American municipalities. But the very existence of municipalities does not necessarily mean they get the final word.
A hierarchy governs municipalities throughout the United States, in which the state maintains authority over local law. The balance in favor of the state varies state by state, but the fundamental conflict is similar: when a city and state disagree, who gets the final word?
The answer is complicated by home rule; home rule does not make up for differences in local power, but states can exert substantial authority, especially if courts find that an issue extends beyond the province of local business.¹
The result is a legal question of territorial jurisdiction over who gets to decide for whom.
From Dillon's Rule to Home Rule
American municipal law has experienced a shift from what has been called Dillon's Rule, after nineteenth-century Iowa Supreme Court Justice John F. Dillon.
Under what became known as Dillon's Rule, a municipality had only the powers granted to it by the state and necessarily incident to those powers.² The assumption was state dominance over municipal matters, since cities only existed with the support of the state.
The structure fundamentally differentiated between municipal and state governance. While states had general governmental authority, cities did not. The trend attracted criticism, since America's growing number of cities needed more latitude in its authority to address unique, local problems.³
The movement resulted in home rule; rather than cities obtaining permission, home-rule systems gave municipalities greater authority to operate in local areas.
California's Experiment
California is an exemplar state in this regard. Article XI, section 5 of the California Constitution provides charter cities with the authority to make and enforce "ordinances . . . concerning municipal affairs."⁴ When a dispute touches upon municipal affairs, the city charter may override conflicting state law.
But there is a caveat. State law prevails when the subject is a concern of the whole state, and the requirements set by state statute satisfy the standard for preemption.⁵
There are two authorities operating in tandem. The city possesses constitutional power to control its own fate, but the state possesses broader constitutional powers that operate over a wide area; how to differentiate the two is the real crux.
The Boundary Problem
The phrase "concerning municipal affairs" sounds precise. It is not.
California's courts have noted the lack of a universal standard of resolution for all conflicts; instead, they look to the context of individual cases.⁶
The approach makes sense; some issues are obviously local, such as the organization of a city's departments, which has a stronger connection to municipal government. But when the issue reaches into the realm of public safety, taxation, employment, environmental regulation, housing, transportation, or any other policy that can affect both local residents and those who live elsewhere, the closer the conflict comes to touching upon the state, the greater the state's regulatory power.
But almost any aspect of municipal governance can touch upon residents outside the city, making the boundary difficult to identify.
California Federal Savings and Loan
The conflict is demonstrated by the California federal savings and loan problem.
In California Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n v. City of Los Angeles, the issues related to taxes imposed by the City of Los Angeles upon savings corporations, argued to have been proper use of its taxing authority by the City of Los Angeles. The Supreme Court of California rejected the proposition that local taxation was automatically immune from state regulation, and indicated that an otherwise local matter can attain a "supramunicipal" dimension, which would be a matter of concern to the state.⁷
It is an important observation; to determine whether a city has authority over a certain power or subject, the issue is not restricted to whether the city traditionally exercised that power; the court considers whether the exercise of that power has effects that go beyond the limits of the city.
That opens the door for state intervention even when a subject is superficially local.
The First Question: Is There Actually a Conflict?
Another safeguard built into the California approach to this conflict is the fact that courts address the possibility that state authority undermines local authority only after addressing whether the conflict actually exists between the two.
In O'Connell v. City of Stockton, the California Supreme Court underscored that courts examine whether a conflict truly exists between the state statute and local ordinance,8 and only then consider municipal versus statewide concern.
It may seem an abstract question, but it can be critical as well; for instance, suppose a state statute addresses one issue while a city adopts another rule that simply adds to it.
If the two laws are compatible, it may be inappropriate to ask whether the state or municipality is more entitled to authority. The resolution of a federalism conflict only comes into play when the two governments can realistically operate simultaneously based on both rules, without one overruling the other's authority. If the local law can operate in parallel to the state law, the conflict will not be resolved.
When State Preemption Wins
State preemption can take other forms. Sometimes the legislature explicitly provides that state law governs in a given space, sometimes a local ordinance conflicts directly with state law, and sometimes courts identify a subject of sufficient statewide concern that state regulation takes precedence.
The California Supreme Court has outlined this as examining the nature of the concern and of the limitation of the power of local authority and whether the state law is reasonably tailored to address that concern.⁹
The resolution requires a balancing of institutional interests; the city asks "why should Sacramento decide this, when it affects our residents primarily?" and the state asks, "why should one city establish rules that affect interests throughout California?"
No single factor is definitive.
Express Preemption Changes the Game
The increasing use of express preemption only makes the conflict more significant. Under the principles of implied preemption, courts must discern whether the legislature intended to displace local governance. But an express preemption provision can specifically say that local governments are forbidden from regulating a given subject.
Harvard Law Review's 2026 examination of local autonomy notes that constitutional local autonomy guarantees provide relatively limited protection against state regulation across different levels of local government when legislatures use explicit preemption.¹⁰
But that approach makes an important distinction between the constitutional protections provided by home rule and protections against state preemption when the state constitution permits it to explicitly displace or limit local authority.
Home rule can give a city constitutional-level protection authority over its autonomy, but that may not be sufficient protection when the state's constitution permits it to directly assert its authority over some subject in the city's jurisdiction.
This is a federalism question, not just a law question.
The Democratic Question
The conflict regarding local authority is also one of representative democracy. A resident of Los Angeles has a representative who can speak to the neighborhood, mayoral representative, members of the state legislature who represents his or her district, and statewide officials that represent California as a whole.
All levels of government represent different populations at their level, but do not necessarily consider the needs of other populations.
Both a local government and a state government may be better suited to regulating a particular issue, and the law can only decide which has ultimate authority.
The residents are concerned with which government makes the rules in a way that will apply to them.
The Problem of 58 Counties and 482 Cities
California epitomizes the problem posed by an increasing number of decentralized communities around the state.
The state is an exemplar for the existence of hundreds of cities, each with different communities and economic conditions, as well as other counties. For each of them to have limitless authority would result in an enormous patchwork of rules over the whole state, but for the state to override local rules every time it disagrees with a municipality would make the promise of home rule considerably less secure.
The system operates between uniformity and experimentation, so that neither uniformity eliminates the ability of cities to respond to local problems, nor does local variation make broad-scale government difficult.
The state constitution exists in this space between the two.
The Future of Local Power
Modern city-state relations are dominated by this question of tension between local and state governance.
Harvard Law Review's 2026 examination of local autonomy identified that constitutional guarantees have provided meaningful protection for local authority in some states, but state preemption continues to limit that, ¹¹ and the trend has been a growing concern for communities as well as local and state governments.
But the lesson of federalism is a fundamental law of the United States: home rule, while it offers meaningful constitutional assurances, is not a uniform law throughout the United States.
It is a collection of state constitutional provisions, and a city may have greater authority to make its own laws in one state than another. That is why this area of law is dominated by questions concerning the jurisdiction of municipal or state law over local issues.
Why It Matters
Local governance forms the foundation of many laws in America; however, while the state legislature can pass legislation, local governors often determine how policies operate in real-world terms, such as how they touch upon streets, homes, businesses, and public services, and to what degree a policy is appropriate towards its residents.
When the state chooses to override local initiatives, rather just the applicability of a law in a given place, it is a dispute that concerns who gets to make rules for a specific population.
Home rule attempts to safeguard citizens' right to have their city decide things for them in ways that can differ by city.
Conclusion
As states become stronger in their regulation and municipalities seek further freedoms, the balance shifts slightly. The question of who can make laws for whom is no less complicated in America than the division between state and federal government it represents.
See Anna K. K. Wagner, Home Rule Reinforcement: Constitutional LocalAutonomy Guarantees, 139 Harv. L. Rev. 1449, 1449-55 (2026).
See id. at 1451-52.
See id. at 1453-55.
Cal. Const. art. XI, §5(a).
See City of Santa Clara v. Von Raesfeld, 3 Cal. 3d 239, 245-46 (1970).
See Committee of Seven Thousand v. Superior Court, 45 Cal. 3d 491, 506 (1988).
California Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n v. City of Los Angeles, 54 Cal. 3d 1, 16-18 (1991).
O'Connell v. City of Stockton, 41 Cal. 4 th 1061, 1075-76 (2007).
See California Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n, 54 Cal. 3d at 16-18.
See Wagner, supra note 1, at 1479-85.
Id. at 1480-90.
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