Worker Heat Safety Laws Are Latest Focus of Red State Preemption

Heat safety mandates aimed at protecting outdoor workers have become the target of Republican-majority legislatures seeking to preempt local ordinances as a means of promoting a consistent, statewide policy.

A newly enacted Florida law, effective July 1, bars cities and counties in the state from imposing their own heat-protection rules on businesses, as Miami-Dade County officials had considered last year.

Its passage follows a sweeping Texas law enacted in 2023—which opponents nicknamed the “death star” law—to preempt local laws and regulations across a broad range of categories, including workplace standards such as construction worker rest break requirements on the books in Austin and Dallas.

The legislation in Florida and Texas follows a familiar call-and-response pattern. When new forms of workplace requirements spread among Democratic-majority city councils and state legislatures, red-state lawmakers block their respective cities and counties from enacting the concept. The preemption is often advocated by business groups concerned about a potential patchwork of varying local laws—as happened with paid sick leave and employee scheduling laws over the past decade.

Policymakers at various levels of government have taken a growing interest in heat safety, particularly for construction and farm workers amid last summer’s reports of record-breaking heat in much of the country. Despite the preemption actions in Florida and Texas, tangible action has been limited.

California, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington state have established workplace heat safety standards, and California is considering an expansion to cover indoor workers as well. Maryland’s labor department also is working to finalize a heat safety rule that would be the first of its kind on the East Coast.

At the federal level, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration is developing a federal indoor and outdoor heat stress rule, but hasn’t offered a timeline for when that rule might be finalized.

Phoenix is the latest hotspot to enact a heat protection standard, requiring city contractors to provide cool water and shaded or air-conditioned rest areas for outdoor workers beginning this month. The city experienced temperatures of 110 degrees or higher on 55 days in 2023, according to the National Weather Service.

Similar legislation has been proposed in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.

Allowing each of Florida’s 67 counties and more than 400 municipalities to enact their own safety rules would create confusion for construction businesses, making it difficult to comply and potentially increasing the risk of accidents, said Carol Bowen, a lobbyist for Florida Associated Builders and Contractors, which supported passage of the new Florida law.

“If we’re talking about construction, OSHA is the law of the land, and every single construction site has a safety meeting every morning,” she said. “Our industry lives by all kinds of safety regulations to make sure the workforce is safe, the general public is safe.”

Generalized Federal Guidance

Even without a heat-specific federal rule, employers nationwide are obligated to protect their workers under the general duty clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, said John D. Surma, an attorney with Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C. in Houston.

“I can’t think of an employer I’ve spoken with in the last two or three years who doesn’t understand what OSHA’s expectations are and they’re trying to comply,” he said, noting he advises companies in construction, oil and gas, and utilities, among other industries.

OSHA advises employers to provide workers who are exposed to heat with water, rest breaks, and acclimatization for new workers. More than half of heat-related workplace fatalities happen in the worker’s first few days on the job, before their body has become accustomed to working in the heat, according to OSHA.

The Florida preemption measure’s passage comes a few months after Miami-Dade County officials considered—but voted down—a worker heat safety proposal in November, with the possibility of revising and reconsidering it this year. In Texas, the new preemption law likely overrides Austin and Dallas rest break mandates for outdoor construction workers, although the state law is tied up in litigation and courts haven’t been asked yet to decide the fate of those local mandates.

“There was a lot of concern out of one county, Miami-Dade. I don’t think it was an issue in any other part of the state,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) told reporters April 12, responding to a question about his rationale for signing the bill a day earlier. “They were pursuing something that was going to cause a lot of problems down there.”

An earlier version of the Florida legislation called for the state’s Department of Commerce to develop its own statewide heat safety standards if OSHA hasn’t implemented a federal standard by 2028. But lawmakers removed that language before sending the bill to the governor.

Worker advocates say blocking local ordinances will prevent cities and counties from helping keep outdoor workers safe.

“Miami is one of the hottest cities in the country,” said Katie Belanger, lead consultant at the Local Solutions Support Center, which advocates for local governing authority.

“This local ordinance is necessary because OSHA standards aren’t going far enough to meet the needs of this community,” she said.

Arizona’s GOP-led legislature could be next to propose preempting heat safety ordinances, following passage of the Phoenix measure, Belanger said.

Beyond Heat

Besides heat protection ordinances, the new Florida law also blocks local ordinances related to employee scheduling, sometimes called “fair workweek” laws, such as those passed in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. Florida joins at least 10 states in preempting those scheduling laws.

Those laws generally require large employers of hourly workers, such as big-box retailers and chain restaurants, to give workers their shift schedules two weeks in advance and pay them extra for any last-minute schedule changes.

Florida and Texas already preempted local minimum wage laws, as do roughly half of states, along with other kinds of employee benefits mandates.

Even before passing its broad 2023 law, Texas brought legal challenges to paid sick time ordinances in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio and won court orders finding that the state’s ban on local minimum wage laws also blocked those ordinances.

Banning heat safety ordinances “is another example of preemption being used to take power away from communities to appease corporations,” Belanger said.