Selected State Substantive and Preemptive Laws 2009-2018, United States (ICPSR 38306)
Version Date: Apr 19, 2023 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Diana Silver, New York University;
Kelley Akiya, New York University;
Jose A. Pagan, New York University;
Jennifer L. Pomeranz, New York University
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38306.v2
Version V2 (see more versions)
Summary View help for Summary
The Selected State Preemptive Laws Dataset (SSPLD) was developed to study trends in preemption laws across states from 2009-2018. Researchers selected four domains where states and localities had enacted substantive and preemptive laws: (1) Paid sick days, (2) food, (3) tobacco, and (4) firearms. For three of these domains (sick days, food, and tobacco), state substantive laws are also included in this dataset for each of the policy topics included in the domain.
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Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
State
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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The original data file included 5 Excel worksheets of notes pertaining to laws and statues related to topics in the data file. These notes are available as accompanying documentation.
- For gun laws, state substantive laws can be merged from RAND's dataset: RAND State Firearm Law Database. Version 2.0, October 10, 2019.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The Selected State Preemptive Laws Dataset (SSPLD) was developed to study trends in preemption laws across states 2009-2018.
Study Design View help for Study Design
Researchers sourced many of the statutes analyzed from other public use data sources:
- Grassroots Change/Preemption Watch
- Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
- A Better Balance
- The National Conference of State Legislatures.
Paid sick leave preemption statutes were identified from the Economic Policy Institute, American Lung Association, Tobacco Free Kids, CDC STATE online database, (all of which display their analysis of laws to date) and conducted original legal research using Lexis+.
For all the sourced statutes, researchers collected all other statutes within the same topical chapter, title, or section, as arranged by the state's legislature, from Lexis+ for the years 2009-2018.
Preemption laws are coded first for the presence of the law, then (in a skip pattern) for the type of preemption. While the researchers made every effort to be comprehensive in their retrieval and coding of these laws, some may be missing.
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Universe View help for Universe
State laws in the 50 United States from 2009-2018
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Data Source View help for Data Source
Economic Policy Institute. Worker rights preemption in the U.S. Available here. Accessed June 26, 2021.
National Conference of State Legislatures. Paid Sick Leave. July 21, 2020. Available here.
A better balance. Interactive Overview of Paid Sick Time Laws in the United States. Available here. Accessed June 26, 2021.
Grassroots Change Preemption Watch. Preemption Maps. Available here. Accessed December 10, 2020.
CDC. State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation (STATE) System. Available here. Accessed June 2019 and August 2021.
Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Preemption of Local Laws. Available here. Accessed December 10, 2020.
American Lung Association. State Legislated Actions on Tobacco Issues (SLATI). Available here. Accessed June 14, 2019.
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HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2023-02-14
Version History View help for Version History
2023-04-19 Principal investigator information was updated for all documentation.
2023-02-14 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

This study is maintained and distributed by the Health and Medical Care Archive (HMCA). HMCA is the official data archive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.