Cite as: 513 U. S. 219 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
"and thus do not amount to a State's 'enact[ment] or enforce-[ment] [of] any law, rule, regulation, standard, or other provision having the force and effect of law' within the meaning of [§ ]1305(a)(1)." 5 Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 9. Cf. Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504, 526 (1992) (plurality opinion) ("[A] common-law remedy for a contractual commitment voluntarily undertaken should not be regarded as a 'requirement . . . imposed under State law' within the meaning of [Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act] § 5(b)."). A remedy confined to a contract's terms simply holds parties to their agreements—in this instance, to business judgments an airline made public about its rates and services.6
5 The United States recognizes that § 1305(a)(1), because it contains the word "enforce" as well as "enact," "could perhaps be read to preempt even state-court enforcement of private contracts." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 17. But the word series "law, rule, regulation, standard, or other provision," as the United States suggests, "connotes official, government-imposed policies, not the terms of a private contract." Id., at 16. Similarly, the phrase "having the force and effect of law" is most naturally read to "refe[r] to binding standards of conduct that operate irrespective of any private agreement." Ibid. Finally, the ban on enacting or enforcing any law "relating to rates, routes, or services" is most sensibly read, in light of the ADA's overarching deregulatory purpose, to mean "States may not seek to impose their own public policies or theories of competition or regulation on the operations of an air carrier." Ibid.
6 American notes that in Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Train Dispatchers, 499 U. S. 117, 129 (1991), the Court read the word "law" in a statutory exemption, 49 U. S. C. § 11341(a), to include "laws that govern the obligations imposed by contract." But that statute and case are not comparable to the statute and case before us. Norfolk & Western concerned the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to approve rail carrier consolidations. A carrier participating in an ICC-approved consolidation is exempt "from the antitrust laws and from all other law . . . as necessary to let [the participant] carry out the transaction." 49 U. S. C. § 11341(a). We read the exemption clause to empower the ICC to override, individually, a carrier's obligations under a collective-bargaining agreement. Our reading accorded with the ICC's and "ma[de] sense of the consolidation provisions," 499 U. S., at 132: "If § 11341(a) did not apply
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