On May 19, 2025, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) joined more than 140 other civil rights and consumer protection organizations in signing a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and members of Congress to oppose a provision in the House Energy and Commerce Committee Draft Budget Resolution, passed out of committee on May 14, that would preempt state and local laws governing artificial intelligence (AI) — without replacing them with comparable protections at the federal level. Congress’s failure to enact comprehensive legislation enshrining AI protections leaves millions of Americans more vulnerable to existing threats, and all of us exposed to the unpredictable safety risks posed by this nascent industry.
The letter emphasizes the sweeping nature of the provision, which would block enforcement of all state and local legislation governing AI systems, AI models, or automated decision systems for a full decade, despite deliberate action from a number of state legislatures, which include input from stakeholders, hearings, and multistakeholder deliberations. Protections for civil rights and children’s privacy, transparency in consumer-facing chatbots to prevent fraud, and other safeguards would be invalidated, even those that are uncontroversial. The resulting unfettered abuses of AI or automated decision systems could run the gamut from pocketbook harms to working families like decisions on rental prices, to serious violations of ordinary Americans’ civil rights, and even to large-scale threats like aiding in cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or the production of biological weapons.
Two-thirds of states, including Kentucky, Ohio, North Dakota and New Jersey have considered common-sense laws that address gaps in federal protections and are crafted in close dialogue with technologists and impacted communities. Those states are filling the need for substantive policy debate over how to safely advance development of this technology. Further, many state attorneys general have also shown interest in pursuing enforcement actions based on the laws already on the books in their own states, which would be barred by this preemption language. This includes state attorneys general from Alabama, California, New Jersey, Oregon, Massachusetts, Texas, and Pennsylvania among others.
CDT Comment Welcomes NIST Effort to Develop Zero Draft
Drawing on CDT’s previous comments on this NIST effort and our prior research on documentation, our submission welcomes NIST’s effort to develop the zero draft, which provides a much-needed step toward more standardized, high-quality guidance on how developers of AI system components should document key properties and potential sources of AI risk. This guidance will be a valuable resource for organizations to improve interoperability, build more performant AI products, and more effectively identify and mitigate AI risks.
Coalition Urges Senate Not to Let Companies Waive Financial Regulations for AI
CDT joined AI Now Institute, American Civil Liberties Union, and several organizations dedicated to tech policy, consumer protection, and civil rights in a letter to Senate leadership and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee opposing the “AI Innovation Labs” language in Sec. 10509 of the CLARITY Act.
As concern about risks and harms related to AI systems continue to grow, a growing chorus of policymakers, industry leaders, and advocates have called for independent AI assessments. This explainer provides an overview of recent proposals for third-party assessment in the United States, including state and federal legislation, executive actions, and industry proposals.
Having third parties assess AI systems might seem like common sense, but crafting effective policies toward this goal can be devilishly tricky. A poorly-constructed ecosystem for third-party assessment could easily fail to consider the most consequential mechanisms of risk, neglect the AI harms that most impact people, or do more to protect AI companies than people.
