Check out the following article that appeared in today’s edition of the New York Times. The NYT report on the “Texas Death Star Bill” is HB 2127, the new Texas law that preempts municipal ordinances that are “inconsistent” with Texas statutes. This was one of the two new pieces of Texas legislation that was the subject of my article in the June 19 edition of Billboard Insider. The Times article appears to be exploiting the terrible heat we’re experiencing here in Texas, and one of the unintended consequences of HB 2127 in this controversial manner. The specific application hypothetically posited in the article is that Austin and many other progressive cities have passed ordinances mandating periodic water breaks for construction and other outside workers; whereas, the Texas Labor Code has no such mandatory requirements, or for that matter any prohibitions on such water breaks. As such,  the reporter effectively applies the new law and concludes that ordinances mandating water breaks are inconsistent with the Texas statutes that don’t address them one way or the other; so, such ordinances are inconsistent with State law and invalid. And, then leads to the unintended consequence of deaths due to heat exhaustion in the Texas heat.

I’m quite confident the authors of HB 2127 never imagined the deaths and other horrible consequences suggested in the Times article. Instead, the sponsors of the legislation had the good intention, I’m sure, that the hodgepodge of municipal ordinances across the State rendered compliance by businesses difficult and haphazard, thereby justifying the predictable application of State law and preemption of inconsistent municipal ordinances. Similarly, as I reported in my Billboard Insider article, I suspect cities will be arguing that the Legislature did not have billboards in mind when it passed the new law. Nevertheless, HB 2127 is pretty clear when it provides that municipalities may pass and enforce only those ordinances that are consistent with the State’s laws. And, it would also appear to naturally follow that, if a billboard was permitted at a site under TxDOT’s regulations,  any prohibitions on such a billboard by a municipal’s ordinance would be inconsistent, preempted, and invalid.

As I also reported, the one thing that all sides are certain to agree on is that this new law will lead to litigation and keep the lawyers busy for a long time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/us/texas-heat-water-breaks.html

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