Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U.S. 504, 26 (1992)

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Cite as: 505 U. S. 504 (1992)

Opinion of Stevens, J.

tion—the duty not to deceive. This understanding of fraud by intentional misstatement is appropriate for several reasons. First, in the 1969 Act, Congress offered no sign that it wished to insulate cigarette manufacturers from longstanding rules governing fraud. To the contrary, both the 1965 and the 1969 Acts explicitly reserved the FTC's authority to identify and punish deceptive advertising practices— an authority that the FTC had long exercised and continues to exercise. See § 5(c) of the 1965 Act; § 7(b) of the 1969 Act; see also nn. 7, 9, supra. This indicates that Congress intended the phrase "relating to smoking and health" (which was essentially unchanged by the 1969 Act) to be construed narrowly, so as not to proscribe the regulation of deceptive advertising.26

Moreover, this reading of "based on smoking and health" is wholly consistent with the purposes of the 1969 Act. State-law prohibitions on false statements of material fact do not create "diverse, nonuniform, and confusing" standards. Unlike state-law obligations concerning the warning necessary to render a product "reasonably safe," state-law proscriptions on intentional fraud rely only on a single, uniform standard: falsity. Thus, we conclude that the phrase "based on smoking and health" fairly but narrowly construed does not encompass the more general duty not to make fraudulent statements. Accordingly, petitioner's claim based on allegedly fraudulent statements made in respondents' advertisements is not pre-empted by § 5(b) of the 1969 Act.27

26 The Senate Report emphasized that the "preemption of regulation or prohibition with respect to cigarette advertising is narrowly phrased to preempt only State action based on smoking and health. It would in no way affect the power of any State . . . with respect to the taxation or the sale of cigarettes to minors, or the prohibition of smoking in public buildings, or similar police regulations." S. Rep. No. 91-566, p. 12 (1969) (emphasis supplied).

27 Both Justice Blackmun and Justice Scalia challenge the level of generality employed in our analysis. Justice Blackmun contends that, as a matter of consistency, we should construe failure-to-warn claims not

529

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