As Congress fails to regulate Big Tech, state and local governments move ahead to pass their own laws on privacy, gig work, anticompetitive conduct, and more
Andrew Rigie said it isn't worth waiting around for tech regulation in Washington. — “New York City is a restaurant capital of the world,” Rigie told Protocol. Tweets: @issielapowsky and @benbrodydc Tweets: Issie Lapowsky / @issielapowsky : Deep dive by @BenBrodyDC on the strategy behind the patchwork of tech-related laws springing up across the country and what it means for the industry. https://www.protocol.com/... Ben Brody / @benbrodydc : It's not just privacy anymore. State and local regulation of tech — and the possibility of patchworks — is popping up on everything from food delivery to AI. And companies are freaked out. My latest for @protocol https://www.protocol.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Washington has been the promised land of tech regulation since at least 2018, when Big Tech began lobbying for a federal privacy law that would overrule California's and hand them wide leeway over personal data. That preemption play is precisely what this story punctures: with Congress still stalled, the action has migrated to city halls and state capitols — a shift privacy advocates have since made explicit, turning to state legislatures in Illinois and New York after repeated Capitol Hill failures.
First-order effects
- Delivery platforms face New York City bills that would force direct employment of thousands of contract couriers, while restaurant operators like Andrew Rigie argue that waiting on Washington means waiting forever.
- Companies now have to track and comply with diverging local rules spanning privacy, gig work, and anticompetitive conduct instead of a single federal standard.
Second-order effects
- A patchwork strengthens the case for the very federal preemption Big Tech has long lobbied for — but only if Congress moves, which leaves firms negotiating with dozens of jurisdictions rather than one.
- Local mandates like the city-level facial recognition laws already show how municipal rules plus lobbying pressure can extract unilateral concessions, as Apple and Microsoft did on right-to-repair when threatened with broader regulation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, state and local governments become the default regulator of tech in the US, with the strictest jurisdiction effectively setting the national baseline and Congress reduced to ratifying whatever the patchwork already imposes.
The trend: Tech regulation in the US is decoupling from Washington, with states and cities filling the vacuum faster than Congress can act.