506
Opinion of Breyer, J.
(1996); Lawrence County v. Lead-Deadwood School Dist. No. 40-1, 469 U. S. 256, 261-262 (1985); Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 842-845 (1984). To draw a similar inference here makes sense, and not simply because of the statutory ambiguity. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is fully responsible for administering the MDA. See 21 U. S. C. § 393. That responsibility means informed agency involvement and, therefore, special understanding of the likely impact of both state and federal requirements, as well as an understanding of whether (or the extent to which) state requirements may interfere with federal objectives. See Hillsborough, 471 U. S., at 721. The FDA can translate these understandings into particularized pre-emptive intentions accompanying its various rules and regulations. See id., at 718. It can communicate those intentions, for example, through statements in "regulations, preambles, interpretive statements, and responses to comments," ibid., as well as through the exercise of its explicitly designated power to exempt state requirements from pre-emption, see 21 U. S. C. § 360k(b); see also ante, at 496 (noting that FDA's authority to exempt state requirements from pre-emption necessarily requires FDA to assess federal laws' pre-emptive effect).
Third, the FDA has promulgated a specific regulation designed to help. That regulation says:
"State . . . requirements are preempted only when . . . there are . . . specific [federal] requirements applicable to a particular device . . . thereby making any existing divergent State . . . requirements applicable to the device different from, or in addition to, the specific [federal] requirements." 21 CFR § 808.1(d) (1995) (emphasis added).
The regulation does not fill all the statutory gaps, for its word "divergent" does not explain, any more than did the statute, just when different device-related federal and state
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