310
Opinion of the Court
worse, to lessen in power, diminish, or relax, or otherwise affect in an injurious manner." Black's Law Dictionary 752 (6th ed. 1990). The following formulation seems to us to capture that meaning and to construe, most sensibly, the text of § 2(b): When federal law does not directly conflict with state regulation, and when application of the federal law would not frustrate any declared state policy or interfere with a State's administrative regime, the McCarran-Ferguson Act does not preclude its application. See Brief for National Association of Insurance Commissioners as Amicus Curiae 6-7.
Our decision in Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U. S. 85 (1983), is similar in tenor. In that case, we considered whether a New York law forbidding discrimination in employee benefit plans on the basis of pregnancy was preempted by ERISA. State agencies and officials, appellants in Shaw, argued that the State's law was not preempted; they relied on ERISA § 514(d), which provides that ERISA's preemption clause shall not be "construed to alter, amend, modify, invalidate, impair, or supersede any law of the United States." 29 U. S. C. § 1144(d). The state agencies and officials maintained that preempting the state law would impair the administration of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., as amended in 1978 by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 92 Stat. 2076, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e(k), for under the enforcement scheme Title VII accommodates, state remedies serve to promote compliance with federal antidiscrimination prescriptions. See 463 U. S., at 101-102.
We held in Shaw that the New York law was preempted only to the extent it prohibited practices lawful under Title VII. See id., at 103. To the extent the New York law prohibited practices also prohibited under federal law, we explained, the New York law was not preempted; the blanket preemption urged by the employer appellees in Shaw, we pointed out, would "impair" Title VII by "frustrat[ing] the
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