360
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
agency remains free to amend its regulations to achieve the commonsense result that the Government itself now seeks. With that understanding, I join the majority's opinion.
Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens joins, dissenting.
A fatal accident occurred on October 3, 1993, at a railroad crossing in Gibson County, Tennessee. The crossing was equipped not with automatic gates or flashing lights, but only with basic warning signs installed with federal funds provided under the Federal Railway-Highway Crossings Program. See 23 U. S. C. § 130. This federal program aimed to ensure that States would, "[a]t a minimum, . . . provide signs for all railway-highway crossings." § 130(d). No authority, federal or state, has found that the signs in place at the scene of the Gibson County accident were adequate to protect safety, as distinguished from being a bare minimum. Nevertheless, the Court today holds that wholesale federal funding of improvements at 196 crossings throughout 11 west Tennessee counties preempts all state regulation of safety devices at each individual crossing. As a result, respondent Dedra Shanklin cannot recover under state tort law for the railroad's failure to install adequate devices. And the State of Tennessee, because it used federal money to provide at least minimum protection, is stopped from requiring the installation of adequate devices at any of the funded crossings.
The upshot of the Court's decision is that state negligence law is displaced with no substantive federal standard of conduct to fill the void. That outcome defies common sense and sound policy. Federal regulations already provide that railroads shall not be required to pay any share of the cost of federally financed grade crossing improvements. 23 CFR § 646.210(b)(1) (1999). Today the railroads have achieved a double windfall: the Federal Government foots the bill for installing safety devices; and that same federal expenditure
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007