104
Opinion of the Court
only option is to obtain the prior approval of the Secretary of Labor, as described in § 18 of the Act.2
III
Petitioner next argues that, even if Congress intended to pre-empt all nonapproved state occupational safety and health regulations whenever a federal standard is in effect, the OSH Act's pre-emptive effect should not be extended to state laws that address public safety as well as occupational safety concerns. As we explained in Part II, we understand
2 Justice Kennedy, while agreeing on the pre-emptive scope of the OSH Act, finds that its pre-emption is express rather than implied. Post, at 112 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). The Court's previous observation that our pre-emption categories are not "rigidly distinct," English v. General Electric Co., 496 U. S. 72, 79, n. 5 (1990), is proved true by this case. We, too, are persuaded that the text of the Act provides the strongest indication that Congress intended the promulgation of a federal safety and health standard to pre-empt all non-approved state regulation of the same issue, but we cannot say that it rises to the level of express pre-emption. In the end, even Justice Kennedy finds express pre-emption by relying on the negative "inference" of § 18(b), which governs when state law will pre-empt federal law. Post, at 112. We cannot agree that the negative implications of the text, although ultimately dispositive to our own analysis, expressly address the issue of federal pre-emption of state law. We therefore prefer to place this case in the category of implied pre-emption. Supra, at 98-99. Although we have chosen to use the term "conflict" pre-emption, we could as easily have stated that the promulgation of a federal safety and health standard "pre-empts the field" for any nonapproved state law regulating the same safety and health issue. See English, supra, at 79-80, n. 5 ("[F]ield preemption may be understood as a species of conflict pre-emption: A state law that falls within a pre-empted field conflicts with Congress' intent (either express or plainly implied) to exclude state regulation"); post, at 116 (Souter, J., dissenting). Frequently, the pre-emptive "label" we choose will carry with it substantive implications for the scope of preemption. In this case, however, it does not. Our disagreement with Justice Kennedy as to whether the OSH Act's pre-emptive effect is labeled "express" or "implied" is less important than our agreement that the implications of the text of the statute evince a congressional intent to preempt nonapproved state regulations when a federal standard is in effect.
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007