Cite as: 503 U. S. 607 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
the relevant state and federal statutes and the role of such state statutes in accomplishing the purpose of the CWA. This purpose, as Ohio states it, is "to encourage compliance with comprehensive, federally approved water pollution programs while shielding federal agencies from unauthorized penalties." Brief for Respondent Ohio 34-35. Ohio asserts that "federal facility compliance . . . cannot be . . . accomplished without the [punitive] penalty deterrent." Id., at 35.
The case for such pessimism is not, however, self-evident. To be sure, an agency of the Government may break the law where it might have complied voluntarily if it had faced the prospect of punitive fines for past violations. But to say that its "compliance cannot be . . . accomplished" without such fines is to assume that without sanctions for past conduct a federal polluter can never be brought into future compliance, that an agency of the National Government would defy an injunction backed by coercive fines and even a threat of personal commitment. The position seems also to ignore the fact that once such fines start running they can be every dollar as onerous as their punitive counterparts; it could be a very expensive mistake to plan on ignoring the law indefinitely on the assumption that contumacy would be cheap.
Nor does the complementary relationship between state and federal law support Ohio's claim that state-law fines thereby "arise under Federal law." Plain language aside, the far more compelling interpretative case rests on the best known statutory use of the phrase "arising under federal law," appearing in the grant of federal-question jurisdiction to the courts of the United States. See 28 U. S. C. § 1331. There, we have read the phrase "arising under" federal law to exclude cases in which the plaintiff relies on state law, even when the State's exercise of power in the particular circumstances is expressly permitted by federal law. See, e. g., Gully v. First Nat. Bank in Meridian, 299 U. S. 109, 116 (1936) (suit over state taxation of nationally chartered bank does not arise under federal law even though such taxa-
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