On May 19, 2025, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and over 140 civil rights and consumer protection organizations signed a letter addressed to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and other members of Congress. The letter opposes a provision in the House Energy and Commerce Committee Draft Budget Resolution that was passed on May 14. This provision would preempt state and local laws governing artificial intelligence (AI) without providing equivalent federal protections.
The letter highlights that this provision would prevent enforcement of all state and local legislation related to AI systems, AI models, or automated decision systems for ten years. It notes that many state legislatures have taken deliberate action involving stakeholders' input, hearings, and multistakeholder discussions. Protections covering civil rights, children's privacy, transparency in consumer-facing chatbots to prevent fraud, among others, would be invalidated. The absence of these protections could lead to abuses ranging from financial harms to working families through rental price decisions to significant violations of civil rights and large-scale threats like cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or biological weapons production.
Two-thirds of states such as Kentucky, Ohio, North Dakota, and New Jersey have considered sensible laws addressing gaps in federal protections. These states engage with technologists and affected communities to develop policies for safe technological advancement. Moreover, many state attorneys general from Alabama, California, New Jersey, Oregon, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania among others are interested in enforcing existing state laws which would be prohibited by this preemption.
The full letter is available for reading.