From Backlash to Preemption: Copy-and-Paste Legislating in the States against Sustainable Building Policies

Battles between environmental activists and incumbent fossil fuel industries have become more intense at the subnational level in recent decades, as states and localities debate reforms toward greater sustainability. A key feature of the subnational climate change mitigation backlash has involved coalitions between fossil fuel industries and allied policymakers in the Republican party, passing measures at the state-level that preempt efforts by localities to become more sustainable. While much is known about processes of climate backlash and related policy diffusion, less is known about the extent of copy-and-paste legislating as a means of preempting climate action, as states heavily borrow from one another (and from mutual lobbyists) to pass similar legislation. We created a unique directed dyadic dataset examining both the diffusion and text similarity (using plagiarism detection at scale) of state legislative bills preempting localities from restricting natural gas utility connections in newly constructed buildings. We find, first, that the diffusion of state preemption legislation was affected by factors including a state’s political conservatism, being lobbied by the same natural gas industry lobbyists, having lower levels of legislative professionalism, and the adopting state having less of a history of engagement in similar types of preemption legislation. Second, net of diffusion, states did more copy-and-paste legislating if they were more ideologically similar, geographically proximate, and similar in their (lack of) legislative professionalism. Our study bears implications theory and research on climate backlash, environmental movements, and subnational political processes. 

Bio

Edward T. Walker is Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. His research investigates the mobilization and outcomes of advocacy by social movement organizations and by business interests. His focus in recent work is on contention surrounding the natural gas industry and general business sustainability, and, separately, corporate political action in response to activism. He is author of Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy, co-editor of Democratizing Inequalities, and his articles appear in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and other journals. He is also co-editor of Organizations and Climate Change (2026, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, with Bodi Vasi). He is a former fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University and a former RWJF Scholar at the University of Michigan.