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Red-State Laws blog
Open meetings and public records, a citizen's toolkit for any local governmentSunshine laws let you watch your local government spend your money, and almost nobody uses them. A grouped checklist, with the reason behind every item.Kelo v. New London and the Backlash That Reached Statehouses NationwideA 5-4 ruling let a city take homes for a private development plan. The anger that followed rewrote property laws in state after state.Why Your City Can't Do That, Dillon's Rule and Home Rule ExplainedCities are creatures of the state; here is how Dillon's Rule, home rule and preemption let a statehouse overrule a council, and where conservatives disagree.Before you drive across state lines with a gun, run this checklistFederal safe passage protects a lawful gun owner only if every condition in 18 U.S.C. 926A is met, and this checklist walks through each one.Initiatives, referendums and amendments, how ballot measures really workHow initiatives, referendums and amendments reach the ballot, the conservative wins from Prop 13 to TABOR, and why wording decides the vote.Vouchers, Tax Credits, ESAs and Charters Compared for State LawmakersSchool choice is a family of mechanisms, and the legal and fiscal differences decide which ones survive in a given state. Here they are side by side.What Can a State Do About Immigration? Ten Answers From Arizona v. United StatesStates have more room than critics say and less than boosters hope, and one 2012 Supreme Court decision draws most of the lines.The Tenth Amendment Rule That Protects Red States Also Protects Sanctuary CitiesConservatives won the anti-commandeering rule, which bars Washington from conscripting state officers. A principle cuts both ways, and it has limits.Why abortion law differs from state to state, mechanism by mechanismThe post-Dobbs patchwork is not chaos. Six legal mechanisms explain it, and each one has a different group of people who can change it.How a Citizen Initiative Gets on the Ballot, Signature by SignatureMost initiative drives fail on procedure and not on popularity, so here are the steps in order, with where to find the exact rules for your own state.E-Verify Explained, the Free Federal Check Most Employers SkipE-Verify is the quietest powerful tool in the immigration debate, and where it is required it changes the incentive to hire off the books.Initiative, Referendum and Recall Explained in Ten Straight AnswersVoters in many states can write laws, veto laws and fire officials directly. Here is what each tool is, where it came from and how conservatives should use it.The license you need to braid hair and the jobs it quietly killsOccupational licensing grew into a gate on roughly a quarter of American jobs. Who it keeps out, what the research says, and the reform that is spreading.You Need the Government's Permission to Braid Hair? Licensing Gone WildLicensing began as protection from real danger and drifted into protection from competition. Here is how that happened, and what a sensible fix looks like.Do Damage Caps Hurt Victims? The Best Case Against Tort Reform AnsweredTrial lawyers say caps on noneconomic damages punish the worst-injured. Here is that argument at full strength, then a numbered answer.Three Towns, Three Rule Books and the Case for Letting States DifferThree imaginary towns show how federalism lets families choose, lets ideas get tested cheaply, and what it costs when a state chooses badly.Seven Right-to-Work Myths From Both Sides, Tested Against the RecordBoth camps in the right-to-work fight over-claim, and a conservative who wants to win should know which claims on his own side will not survive a fact-check.What Right-to-Work Means and How Taft-Hartley Let States DecideRight-to-work is a state law that exists because Congress let states choose in 1947. What it bars, what it leaves alone, and how Janus changed public jobs.Four ways a state can regulate carrying a gun, side by sideNo-issue, may-issue, shall-issue and permitless carry compared in one table: who decides, what standard applies, and what the citizen must do.Why your carry permit works in some states and fails in othersA carry permit is a state document, and no federal rule makes another state honor it. How reciprocity works and the arguments for and against a national rule.