Cite as: 529 U. S. 861 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
Indeed, one can assume that Congress or an agency ordinarily would not intend to permit a significant conflict. While we certainly accept the dissent's basic position that a court should not find pre-emption too readily in the absence of clear evidence of a conflict, English, supra, at 90, for the reasons set out above we find such evidence here. To insist on a specific expression of agency intent to pre-empt, made after notice-and-comment rulemaking, would be in certain cases to tolerate conflicts that an agency, and therefore Congress, is most unlikely to have intended. The dissent, as we have said, apparently welcomes that result, at least where "frustration-of-purpos[e]" pre-emption by agency regulation is at issue. Post, at 907-908, and n. 22. We do not.
Nor do we agree with the dissent that the agency's views, as presented here, lack coherence. Post, at 904-905. The dissent points, ibid., to language in the Government's brief stating that
"a claim that a manufacturer should have chosen to install airbags rather than another type of passive restraint in a certain model of car because of other design features particular to that car . . . would not necessarily frustrate Standard 208's purposes." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 26, n. 23 (emphasis added).
And the dissent says that these words amount to a concession that there is no conflict in this very case. Post, at 905. But that is not what the words say. Rather, as the italicized phrase emphasizes, they simply leave open the question whether FMVSS 208 would pre-empt a different kind of tort case—one not at issue here. It is possible that some special design-related circumstance concerning a particular kind of car might require airbags, rather than automatic belts, and that a suit seeking to impose that requirement could escape pre-emption—say, because it would affect so few cars that its rule of law would not create a legal "obstacle" to 208's mixed-fleet, gradual objective. But that is not what peti-
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