A role for local government law in federal-state-local disputes

The localism perspective becomes crucial to federalism any time a federal activity or law is interjected into what otherwise would be a pure state law issue about the allocation of power between a state and its political subdivisions. The disputes that have made it to the stage of reported judicial opinion have been the catalyst of thoughtful reexaminations of the overlooked local interest that is at play every time the federal and state governments disagree about the appropriate course of action for a unit of local government. The lawsuit, filed by a number of Missouri municipalities, municipal organizations, and municipally owned utilities, argued that the FCC should have concluded that the federal law was intended to preempt state law prohibitions of municipal or other local government telecommunications service provision. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, no doubt at least in part because of a conflict in the circuits.