Minnesota state lawmakers repealed two state laws on Wednesday, effectively removing barriers preventing cities and towns from providing municipal broadband services.
The legislative change reduces the number of states with laws preempting local governments from building their own broadband networks to 16. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 19 states held laws preventing community broadband networks.
The rollback of Minnesota’s preemption laws comes at a critical moment as states will soon begin to select grant recipients under a $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
The statute establishing the BEAD program mandated that states receiving these funds cannot exclude local governments from applying to use them for building public broadband networks. However, with 16 states maintaining these restrictive laws, the future impact of the legal barriers remains uncertain.