The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the United States. Smoke-free indoor air laws protect individuals from the negative health effects of cigarette smoke.(1) State statutory preemption of local tobacco control ordinances is a legal construct which may be used by states to prevent local lawmakers from enacting local ordinances that are more restrictive than the state laws. The tobacco industry has historically supported preemption as a strategy to prevent the diffusion of effective community-based tobacco control laws.(2) As of December 31, 2004, 19 states preempted local smoke-free indoor air ordinances in government workplaces, private workplaces, or restaurants.(3) However, court decisions affect how laws are interpreted and enforced and state and federal courts have issued a number of significant opinions related to preemption of state clean indoor statutes. (3)

Methods: Using data collected for CDC's State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation System through systematic searches of an online legal research database of appellate-level state and federal court decisions, and utilizing state examples, this presentation examines the language of court opinions to explain the variation in judicial reasoning and legal outcomes across states when clean indoor air statutes are challenged on preemption grounds.

Results: Preliminary research shows there have been state and federal appellate-level decisions related to preemptive provisions in 14 states. Analysis suggests outcomes of challenges to local tobacco control ordinances on preemption grounds depends on at least three factors: 1) state constitution home rule provisions, 2) precedent, and 3) rules of statutory construction applied.