[ShrimpHawk]

If they didn't want to be subject to Austin city regulations they could have not built in Austin city limits

[exabrial]

If Austin didn’t want to be subject to Texas regulations they should move somewhere else.

[polski-g]

Cities in Texas can annex surrounding land, unlike say in NY where boundaries are fixed.

It makes sense that the land owners can choose to be de-annexed if they want.

[tombert]

I hate Elon Musk and I think that the Tesla corporation is overvalued, and I am generally for environmental regulations, but it's not like "state laws preempting city laws" is unique to Texas. This is true of pretty much every state, just like federal laws preempting state laws.

I can't really blame a for-profit corporation for using the laws as they are written. I blame Texas for having the loophole.

[fallingknife]

It's actually not just like federal laws preempting state laws. It's much stronger. States actually have a degree of sovereignty that can protect them from preemption in some cases. Local governments have none and are completely subordinated to the state governments.

[BobaFloutist]

>I can't really blame a for-profit corporation for using the laws as they are written.

It's funny how whenever a corporation behaves hostilely toward its community, or its customers, or its competitors the rallying cry is "Well it's for profit, they might as well do whatever is mathematically correct", but whenever people turn around and try to make the behavior mathematically incorrect by, say, regulating the corporation or refusing to do business with them or protesting and blocking the factory site they're all of a sudden being unfair and disrupting legitimate business operations.