Cite as: 504 U. S. 374 (1992)
Stevens, J., dissenting
checked, the airlines have engaged in practices in these areas that are unfair and deceptive under state law. The individual states through NAAG can play an important role in eliminating such practices through these Guidelines.
Justice Stevens, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Blackmun join, dissenting.
In cases construing the "virtually unique pre-emption provision" in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), see Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern Cal., 463 U. S. 1, 24, n. 26 (1983), we have given the words "relate to" a broad reading. The construction of that unique provision was supported by a consideration of the relationship between different subsections of ERISA that have no parallel in other federal statutes, see Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U. S. 85, 98 (1983), and by the legislative history of the provision, id., at 98-99. Today we construe a pre-emption provision in the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (ADA), 49 U. S. C. App. § 1301 et seq., a statute containing similar, but by no means identical, language. Instead of carefully examining the language, structure, and history of the ADA, the Court decides that it is "appropriate," given the similarity in language, to give the ADA pre-emption provision a similarly broad reading. Ante, at 384. In so doing, the Court disregards established canons of statutory construction, and gives the ADA pre-emption provision a construction that is neither compelled by its text nor supported by its legislative history.
I
"In deciding whether a federal law pre-empts a state statute, our task is to ascertain Congress' intent in enacting the federal statute at issue." Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724, 738 (1985) (internal quotation marks omitted). At the same time, our pre-emption analysis "must be guided by respect for the separate spheres of gov-
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