Hi
Which article (if any) of the US Constitution allows state laws to prohibit the implementation of gun-control laws? Does this come under the heading of state rights? Do all individual state constitutions allow the state government to block laws from being implemented?
I look forward to your feedback
The state forbids cities and counties from implementing their own gun-control laws. Those who ignore the law risk being removed from office and slapped with a hefty fine.
To clarify what you’re asking: you want to know if the US Constitution includes any specific provision that allows State governments to have supremacy over local (city or county) governments?
I suppose you could call it states’ rights.
Cities and counties (and other political entities such as school districts) exist only because state laws allow them to exist. All states have constitutions and laws detailing how cities and counties must operate, including things they aren’t allowed to do. A state is free to create any requirements it wants, so long as they don’t violate the U.S. constitution. A state could order a city to paint all of its sidewalks blue. A state could dissolve a city and take over all of its assets.
What it comes down to is that a state can prohibit gun-control laws because there’s nothing in the federal constitution (or in its interpretation by the courts) to prevent it. A state law that, say, made the expression of certain political opinions illegal would be unconstitutional. There is no provision in the federal constitution protecting the right of a city or county to pass its own legislation on any topic.
That’s sort of reversed- the framers of the constitution took as the default position that states would have legislative power and only be overruled in specified ways. It doesn’t speak much to how states govern themselves, other than Article 4 requiring every state to have a republican form of government. The Tenth Amendment also speaks to the limits of the federal government over the states.
For the most part, state governments are governed by their respective state constitutions. The power of the Florida state legislature over Florida local governments is specified by the Florida constitution - the federal government usually doesn’t have a role in overseeing it.
So the question is really a state to state question in the general sense, depending on how each state constitution allocates power between the state government and local municipalities.
The only situation where federal law would enter into it would be if someone tried to implement something forbidden by the US Constitution - and in that case it would not matter if the entity doing so were state-wide or local.
Paging SCOTUS.
Also, states can amend their own constitutions, so even if a law prohibiting local gun restrictions were prohibited by the Florida state constitution, there’s nothing at the federal level that would keep the state from changing it.
The United States Constitution does not govern the relationship between states and their sub-units of government (cities, counties, townships, parishes, etc.). It governs the relationship between the states and the federal government (and between the federal government and the people). The United States Constitution is irrelevant in a question of state control over municipalities, other than by precluding the state from infringing upon the rights of individuals as set forth in the various amendments (see, for example, Amendment XIV, specifically equal protection and due process).
Well, it also requires that all of the states have a republican form of government, but there’s no detail given on that, and there are all sorts of potential relationships between a state and its components that are consistent with that.
To clarify what was said above, the federal government is a creation of the states. But a state is not a creation of the cities and other localities; rather the cities are created by and subject to the jurisdiction of, their state. There are a few limitations on states in the US constitution: they must have a republican form of government (nothing in principle would stop a state from establishing a parliamentary government, for example) and their laws must give equal protection to all inhabitants. Of course, that clause was widely ignored for a century following the civil war when no deep south state allowed blacks to vote except in token numbers and the federal government ignored that.
Well, a creation of some of the states, at least. Most of the states were created by the federal government. But the relationship between them is still as laid out in the Constitution.
This simply means that the state’s governmental form itself has to be republican.
A bit of a side tangent, but how does California’s binding majority rule proposition process (or more specifically California Proposition 7 (1911)) square with the constitutional requirement that state governments be republican?
Although the US Constitution requires the states to have a republican form of government, it doesn’t define or explain the term “republican”, and of course political scientists can point to different schools of republicanism, or different theories as to what is the essence of republicanaism. In one particularly broad conception, republican doesn’t mean much more than “not monarchical”. Suffice it to say that lots of republics have constitutional mechanisms under which, by popular initiative, particular questions can be conclusively decided by popular vote.
Thanks Jeff Lichtman. But the article refers to forbidding existing gun-control laws from being implemented rather than amending the laws. I’m trying to understand the concept of forbidding laws that have been passed. Is it easier to forbid the implementation of such laws rather than strike them? When these gun-control laws were passed did the Florida Hose of Representative or Florida Senate have a majority of Democrats as oppose to Republicans?
And the answer, again, is that cities only have exactly as much power as the state says that they have. If the state’s constitution says that the state can pass laws that override local laws, before, after, or at any other time, then the state can do that.
This is the same thing that happened in NC with the so-called “bathroom bill”. What precipitated the whole thing was the city of Charlotte passing an anti-discrimination ordinance. The NC General Assemby then basically passed a law forbidding any laws of that sort.
A state could pass a law that targets each law, but that would mean that the law would be in force until the repeal law passed. By forbidding gun control laws from being enforced it preempts not just the current law but any future ones as well.
Or, to be more precise, unless it says they CAN’T, then they can.
The question I would ask you, Tim, is why you would think that’s not “republican”?
Remember: a republican government is not the same thing as a democratic government. Great Britain is a democratic monarchy; the Soviet Union was a republic that was only nominally democratic.
I wasn’t talking about the state amending local laws. I was pointing out that if there’s anything in the state constitution to prevent the state from prohibiting gun control laws, the state can amend its constitution either to directly prohibit gun control laws, or it can amend the constitution to the allow the state to prohibit such laws by statute.
And, yes, it’s easier for a state legislature to pass a law once than it is to repeal local laws as they’re made. I can’t remember ever hearing of a state legislature directly repealing any local law—that’s not how states generally operate. Courts can declare a law unconstitutional or otherwise illegal, but state legislatures don’t usually review individual local laws.
BTW, it’s hard to write about this without sinking into a sea of negations (prohibiting the prohibition of prohibition laws).
Also, I really like the idea of a Hose of Representatives.