Updating consumer protection laws and more news from the states

Good evening. Today, a coalition of Democrats in New Mexico promised action on updating the state’s consumer protection laws, sparked by the attorney general’s pursuit of cases against social media giant Meta. 

In Maryland, the governor unveiled a task force that will provide input on large data center proposals in the state, while a judge allowed a North Carolina project to move forward despite a county moratorium. 

Across the country, tens of thousands of Americans continue to lose access to food assistance each month. 

And as the Trump administration changes rules protecting endangered species, state laws are coming into the spotlight. 

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, state Rep. Linda Serrato and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deb Haaland on Wednesday announced their plans to modernize the state’s consumer protection law and to craft new regulations for kids on the internet, Source New Mexico reports. 

The Democrats said they intend to introduce a bill during next year’s legislative session called the Consumer Protection and Fair Pricing Act that would update the penalties and regulations under the state’s decades-old consumer protection law. A proposed Online Safety and Accountability Act would more closely regulate online content aimed at children, in particular.

Torrez has invoked the late-1960s Unfair Practices Act when suing the social media giant Meta and retailers he’s accused of marketing vaping products to underage youth. This year, Torrez won a combined $942 million in judgments against Meta; he said Wednesday the judgments would have been significantly more if state law had higher fines or adjusted penalties for inflation. 

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore is commissioning a state task force to examine new data center proposals, and advise local jurisdictions considering the projects, Maryland Matters reports. 

The task force will review projects that expect to consume at least 25 megawatts of electricity at their peak demand to determine whether they align with the state’s principles, which include protecting electricity ratepayers from cost burdens, providing sufficient environmental protections and having the support of the community.

The final decision on data center projects still rests with local governments.

Moore said he also plans to advocate for the repeal of a state tax exemption for data centers, established in 2020, during the next legislative session, which begins in January.

Related coverage:

Missouri: Backers of a redistricting referendum asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene for a third time in three weeks in the fight over which congressional map must be used for the Nov. 3 elections.

Iowa: The cities of Johnston and Grimes are joining Des Moines and dozens of other municipalities in suing some of the nation’s biggest providers of fire trucks over alleged parasitic pricing.

North Carolina: Three nonprofit organizations and two voters are suing over new absentee ballot requirements that put votes in jeopardy of being discarded. 

New Jersey: The Republican National Committee has sued the state’s top election official and five county election supervisors for withholding voter records, following the revelation that thousands of noncitizens were inadvertently registered. 

Kansas: A state legislator is demanding an investigation into a League of Women Voters chapter that gave $5 gift cards to high school students who registered to vote. 

Oregon: After losing a federal appeals case, the Department of Human Services has narrowed protections under state rules for ensuring LGBTQ+ foster youth have inclusive placements.

Louisiana: While major players in the liquified natural gas industry recently contributed to an effort to restock redfish in coastal waters, some fishermen say industry efforts to improve the environment near export facilities should go further.

Wisconsin: Following President Donald Trump’s executive order to remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list, future management of the wolf population is one of the most heated issues in the state’s conservation politics. 

Washington: Businesses using smaller trucks have been slow to take up the state’s new electric truck vouchers, with only 5% of funding claimed for cargo vans and small work trucks.

Maria Oceja, founder of Vecindarios 901, a Memphis-based grassroots organization, speaks at a press conference held by the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition before a Tuesday hearing in federal court over the organization's lawsuit seeking to stop the Tennessee Highway Patrol from conducting joint traffic stops with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

In its federal lawsuit, the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition and seven Tennessee taxpayers alleged the THP is violating state law and the U.S. Constitution by making traffic stops of motorists suspected of being noncitizens solely based on their ethnic or racial appearance and then allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — riding along or stationed nearby — to demand immigration papers and detain drivers.

State attorneys defending the Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Department of Homeland Security argued in court filings that state troopers have only engaged in legal traffic stops, based on probable cause of a traffic or criminal violation, and defended the cooperative effort between state troopers and ICE agents.

Read more from Tennessee Lookout. 

More immigration coverage: 

U.S. senators said Wednesday that a vast and growing network of artificial intelligence-driven Flock cameras could violate constitutional privacy rights, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports.

GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, the chair of the Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said the point of the hearing was to find out “what is going on with the expanding surveillance network that appears to be going coast to coast in this country.”

Hawley said he invited the CEO of Flock Safety to testify, but he did not appear. 

Senators heard from a woman wrongly arrested over a fatal car crash after a Flock camera captured a photo of her vehicle three miles from the crash site.

They speculated that more people could be falsely accused based on inaccurate information gathered by the devices. They also said 4th Amendment violations were likely because the law enforcement agencies that use the service are able to use the data to track movements without a warrant.  

“If you haven’t heard of Flock, all I have to say is Flock’s probably heard of you,” Hawley said. “I’m sure we’re all in the database.”

More from the D.C. Bureau: 

This fall, voters in at least nine states will decide whether to cut, cap or raise taxes through ballot measures that will give them a direct hand in steering state tax policy in a conservative or progressive direction, Stateline reports.

Some states, such as California, will weigh whether to tax — or untax — their wealthiest residents. Others, such as  Florida, are considering a myriad of mostly conservative-backed measures to cut property or income taxes.

Related coverage: 

Tens of thousands of Americans continue to lose access to food assistance each month, even as Congress debates slowing down major cuts to federal food stamps, Stateline reports. 

New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows more than 330,000 Americans lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, between May and June, the latest numbers available. 

More than 5 million people have lost food stamps since the enactment last July of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut taxes and federal safety net programs.

More from Stateline: False birth control claims are proliferating, survey says

Though they can be tricky to spot, the charisma and rarity of some of New Hampshire’s federally endangered and threatened species have bought them some local celebrity, New Hampshire Bulletin reports.

Recognizable and photogenic, for example, are the piping plovers that raise puffball chicks on the Seacoast; Concord’s own sky-colored Karner blue butterflies; and the rare and evasive Canada lynx. Others among these critters’ federally listed peers are less well-known: The dwarf wedgemussel and the Northern long-eared bat, for instance, don’t carry the same level of name recognition (at least, not in most circles). 

But all of these species and a handful of other plants and animals are listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered or threatened, meaning they face an elevated danger of extinction. Since 1973, species on these lists have been afforded certain federal protections under the Endangered Species Act.

What that means is now changing, however, as the Trump administration moves to reinterpret the law. The administration says the action aligns the act with its “original intent,” calling a previous definition of harm “misguided.” But conservation groups have opposed the change, arguing it removes restrictions on some of the biggest threats that wildlife face.

In New Hampshire, as in other states, the changes raise state laws protecting endangered species to new prominence. 

“What the federal rollbacks are going to do is make it harder for the states to list species, and they’re going to give states, sort of, a license to give less protections to threatened species,” said Erica Fuller, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation. On the other hand, she said, “states can actually go farther than the federal government, if they want to.”