A recurring obstacle to local health and environmental standards is preemption: higher levels of government, or industry litigation, overriding stricter municipal rules. Our position is that local jurisdictions should have explicit, durable protection to set environmental, health, and attentional standards above the national floor.

Where a town chooses to restrict a particular pesticide on public land, to alter its municipal water treatment, or to establish phone-free zones in its schools, we argue that choice should be insulated from corporate preemption challenges. We frame the national baseline as exactly that—a floor, not a ceiling.

The underlying principle is that the people who breathe the air and drink the water have standing to govern the air and the water. This connects to our broader enclave strategy: change driven upward from coordinated local jurisdictions rather than waiting on federal apparatus. We present it as a directional argument; the constitutional and statutory questions around preemption are genuinely contested and would require careful legal design.