386
Opinion of the Court
if the pre-emption effected by § 1305(a)(1) were such a limited one, no purpose would be served by the very next subsection, which preserves to the States certain proprietary rights over airports. 49 U. S. C. App. § 1305(b).
Next, petitioner advances the notion that only state laws specifically addressed to the airline industry are pre-empted, whereas the ADA imposes no constraints on laws of general applicability. Besides creating an utterly irrational loophole (there is little reason why state impairment of the federal scheme should be deemed acceptable so long as it is effected by the particularized application of a general statute), this notion similarly ignores the sweep of the "relating to" language. We have consistently rejected this precise argument in our ERISA cases: "[A] state law may 'relate to' a benefit plan, and thereby be pre-empted, even if the law is not specifically designed to affect such plans, or the effect is only indirect." Ingersoll-Rand, supra, at 139; see Pilot Life, supra, at 47-48 (common-law tort and contract suits pre-empted); Metropolitan Life, 471 U. S., at 739 (state law requiring health insurance plans to cover certain mental health expenses pre-empted); Alessi v. Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc., 451 U. S. 504, 525 (1981) (workers' compensation laws pre-empted).
Last, the State suggests that pre-emption is inappropriate when state and federal law are consistent. State and federal law are in fact inconsistent here—the DOT opposes the obligations contained in the guidelines, and Texas law imposes greater liability—but that is beside the point. Nothing in the language of § 1305(a)(1) suggests that its "relating
pre-emptive scope than the Senate's . . . language," post, at 426—which is to say because the Conference Report failed to specify the completely obvious, that "relating to" is broader than "determining." The dissent evidently believes not only that plain statutory language cannot be credited unless specifically explained in legislative history, but also that the apparent import of legislative history cannot be credited unless specifically explained in legislative history.
Page: Index Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007