# Federal Preemption The displacement of state law by federal law under the [[Supremacy Clause]]. Distinct from commandeering: preemption **nullifies** a state law, it does not conscript state officials. Two families. **Express** preemption, where a statute says so — the standard analysis is then how broadly the preemption clause sweeps. **Implied** preemption, in two forms: *field* preemption, where federal regulation is so pervasive it leaves no room for the states (immigration status classification, per [[Arizona v. United States]]), and *conflict* preemption, where compliance with both is impossible or state law obstructs federal purposes. The presumption against preemption in traditional state fields survives but has weakened. Agency regulations preempt as well as statutes, which converts preemption into an executive tool: a rulemaking can displace state law without a vote in Congress. That is the 2025–26 move. The December 11, 2025 executive order established a DOJ AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state AI statutes on preemption and commerce grounds, alongside a legislative preemption push — see [[AI Action Plan]]. The argument is that a patchwork of state laws (Colorado's algorithmic-discrimination act, California's frontier-model statute) obstructs a federal policy of AI acceleration; the difficulty is that Congress has enacted almost no AI law for state law to conflict with, and preemption by executive order alone has no precedent. The Task Force's suits are the test of whether "federal policy" without a federal statute can preempt anything. ## The pattern Preemption is the doctrine the right invokes when it holds Washington and resists when it does not. The same movement that argues for state sovereignty against federal environmental and civil-rights law has, since 2025, sought federal preemption of state AI regulation, state consumer-protection suits against fossil-fuel companies, state ESG rules and blue-state gun and abortion-shield laws — while arguing [[Anti-Commandeering Doctrine]] to protect red-state sheriffs and rejecting it for blue-state [[Sanctuary Jurisdiction]]s. The [[Supremacy Clause]] page carries the constitutional text; this page records that its invocation is a function of who is in the White House, and the [[States' Rights]] page that the same is true of its opposite. ## See also - [[Supremacy Clause]] · [[Dormant Commerce Clause]] · [[Arizona v. United States]] - [[Anti-Commandeering Doctrine]] · [[Federalism Powers Crosswalk]]