By Steve Wishnia

AUSTIN, Tex.—On Aug. 30, at the end of a summer in which the temperature in Austin topped 100° for a record 45 consecutive days, a local judge ruled unconstitutional a new state law intended to nullify local ordinances that require water breaks for construction workers.

Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble held that the law violated a 1912 amendment to the state constitution that gives cities and towns with more than 5,000 people the power of self-government.

“The Court DECLARES House Bill 2127 in its entirety is unconstitutional — facially, and as applied to Houston as a constitutional home rule city and to local laws that are not pre-empted under article XI, section 5 of the Texas Constitution,” she wrote in a two-page order.

The ruling came two days before HB 2127, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, was scheduled to go into effect. The water-break laws in Austin and Dallas were its most notorious target, but it would prohibit local governments from enacting any laws stronger than the state’s in the fields of labor, agriculture, finance, business and commerce, insurance, natural resource protections, occupational law, and property law.

It is by far the broadest among dozens of laws in Texas and other states that pre-empt local governments from setting local minimum wages higher than the state’s, requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, regulating rents, or acting on numerous other issues. Opponents dubbed it the “Death Star.”

“This ruling allows critical, life-saving local policies to remain in place – including worker protections like rest breaks for construction workers,” the Texas AFL-CIO said in a joint statement with Local Progress Texas, Every Texan, the ACLU of Texas, and the Workers Defense Project. “We celebrate this win today while also acknowledging that this fight is far from over. The ‘Death Star’ law is part of a trend of conservative state legislatures across the country using preemption as a tool to undermine local policies that protect vulnerable Americans and concentrate power in the hands of extreme lawmakers and their corporate interests.”

The state attorney general’s office told the Texas Tribune it has filed an appeal.

Houston lawsuit

The city of Houston filed a challenge to the law early in July. San Antonio and El Paso joined it, and several smaller cities endorsed it.

Texas has long had the means to pre-empt local laws that conflict with state law, Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement at the time, so “HB 2127 is unnecessary, dismantling the ability to govern at the level closest to the people and therefore punishing all Texas residents.”

“HB 2127 would effectively repeal Texas constitutional home rule, impermissibly expand the scope of state preemption of local law, and improperly shift the burden of disproving preemption to cities,” the suit argued. “HB 2127 achieves these unconstitutional ends by using vague language so indefinite, awkward, and opaque that it fails to notify Texas cities which of their laws they may enforce or Texas businesses and residents which local laws they must obey.”

The mayor’s office said the bill would kill Houston’s “pay-or-play” requirements for city contractors, which provide 30,000 uninsured Houstonians with health care.

Supporters of the law contend that it is necessary to protect businesses from a “patchwork quilt of regulations.” The attorney general’s office argued that Houston had no right to sue the state, because the state can have broad laws that affect city governance.

“The judgment today by a Democrat Travis County District Judge is not worth the paper it’s printed on,” state Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), HB 2127’s House sponsor, posted on Twitter, aka X, on Aug. 30. “The Texas Supreme Court will ultimately rule this law to be completely valid. The ruling today has no legal effect or precedent, and should deter no Texan from availing themselves of their rights when HB 2127 becomes law on September 1.”

Gov. Abbott has been one of the most aggressive state leaders in pushing to pre-empt local laws and regulations, but they are a major front nationally. State governments dominated by white, rural and suburban Republicans use pre-emption to restrict cities that have larger proportions of Black, Latino, and LGBT people; tend to be more pro-labor; and are wrestling with high housing costs. Since 1997, 27 states have enacted laws against local minimum wages. Twenty-five bar either local prevailing-wage laws or project-labor agreements for publicly funded construction projects, with all but three of those measures passed since 2011.

Meanwhile, at least three workers in Texas have died of heat-related causes since the beginning of June, the most recent a 57-year-old UPS driver who died four days after he collapsed in a small town near Dallas. And the state is not likely to get much cooler in September. The Weather.com forecast for Austin predicts highs above 100° every day for the next two weeks — except for one day when it is forecast to be only 99°.

That’s even too hot for pets to walk on sidewalks without burning their paws.