The primary role of our national policy arm, Libertas Institute, is to help other think tanks, grassroots groups, and elected officials implement the reforms that we innovated with Libertas Utah in our HQ state. And as of today we’re pleased to report that 11 states have adopted 15 of our policy reforms!
Our policy reform work across the country includes over a dozen innovative reforms we help our partners with, though our efforts are focused on a core few, including:
- Regulatory Sandboxes — removing legal obstacles that inhibit entrepreneurship by providing business owners a two-year regulatory “safe space” during which time they can operate without being punished for violating an outdated policy that did not foresee their innovative business model, product, or service.
- Youth Entrepreneurship — prohibiting local governments from requiring business licenses, food handler’s permits, taxes, or other requirements of minors engaged in occasional entrepreneurship (not just lemonade stands!).
- Privacy — ensuring robust state-level enforcement of the Fourth Amendment to shield people from government surveillance and maintain their rights in a quickly evolving technology landscape that empowers state actors to easily surveil citizens.
- Portable Benefits — modernizing the law to ensure gig and contract workers have access to benefits that align with their flexible work arrangements, free from obsolete and labor regulations.
Each of these policy reforms were first innovated in Utah, following our “nail it, then scale it” approach — pass the reform in a friendly state with Libertas Utah, then scale it to other states with our national team.
These 15 successful bills in 11 states come after significant effort at the ground level to build momentum; to date, we’ve worked on over eighty bills across thirty states. As we continue growing our national outreach program we anticipate increasing these numbers substantially in order to create a freer future together with our state-level partners across the country.