Cite as: 505 U. S. 88 (1992)
Souter, J., dissenting
ment, a State would have been barred from enforcing any standard of its own.
Once again, however, that is not the necessary implication of the text. A purely permissive provision for enforcement of state regulations does not imply that all state regulations are otherwise unenforceable. All it necessarily means is that the Secretary could agree to permit the State for a limited time to enforce whatever state regulations would otherwise have been pre-empted, as would have been true when they actually so conflicted with the federal standard that an employer could not comply with them and still comply with federal law as well. Thus, in the case of a State wishing to submit a plan, the provision as I read it would have allowed for the possibility of just one transition, from the pre-Act state law to the post-Act state plan. Read as the Court reads it, however, employers and employees in such a State would have been subjected first to state law on a given issue; then, after promulgation of a federal standard, to that standard; and then, after approval of the plan, to a new state regime. One enforced readjustment would have been better than two, and the statute is better read accordingly.*
IV
In sum, our rule is that the traditional police powers of the State survive unless Congress has made a purpose to
*The plurality also relies on § 18(f), 29 U. S. C. § 667(f), which deals with withdrawal of approval of a state plan. See ante, at 101. The section provides that "the State may retain jurisdiction in any case commenced before the withdrawal of the plan in order to enforce standards under the plan whenever the issues involved do not relate to the reasons for the withdrawal of the plan." The plurality is mistaken in concluding that § 18(f) "assumes that the State loses the power to enforce all of its occupational safety and health standards once approval is withdrawn." Ibid. At most it assumes that the State loses its capacity to enforce the plan (except for pending cases). It says nothing about state law that may remain on the books exclusive of the plan's authority, or about new law enacted after withdrawal of the Secretary's approval.
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