HB604 would require federal employees to obtain the county sheriff’s written permission prior to making an “arrest, search, or seizure” in the state, with exceptions, and would also invalidate any federal law purporting to give federal employees the authority of a county sheriff.
The House failed to pass HB604 on March 2, 2023, by a vote of 32 to 68. We have assigned pluses to the yeas because upholding the authority of local law enforcement is a basic premise of self-government under the U.S. Constitution’s federal system, which decentralizes power and protects state sovereignty. The 10th Amendment makes it explicit that any power not delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the States by the Constitution is “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”