Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 529 U.S. 861, 48 (2000)

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908

GEIER v. AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO.

Stevens, J., dissenting

tion of the full purposes and objectives of Congress." Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67 (1941).22

While the presumption is important in assessing the preemptive reach of federal statutes, it becomes crucial when the pre-emptive effect of an administrative regulation is at issue. Unlike Congress, administrative agencies are clearly not designed to represent the interests of States, yet with relative ease they can promulgate comprehensive and detailed regulations that have broad pre-emption ramifications for state law. We have addressed the heightened federalism and nondelegation concerns that agency pre-emption raises by using the presumption to build a procedural bridge across the political accountability gap between States and administrative agencies. Thus, even in cases where implied regulatory pre-emption is at issue, we generally "expect an administrative regulation to declare any intention to pre-empt state law with some specificity." 23 California Coastal

22 Recently, one commentator has argued that our doctrine of frustration-of-purposes (or "obstacle") pre-emption is not supported by the text or history of the Supremacy Clause, and has suggested that we attempt to bring a measure of rationality to our pre-emption jurisprudence by eliminating it. Nelson, Preemption, 86 Va. L. Rev. 225, 231-232 (2000) ("Under the Supremacy Clause, preemption occurs if and only if state law contradicts a valid rule established by federal law, and the mere fact that the federal law serves certain purposes does not automatically mean that it contradicts everything that might get in the way of those purposes"). Obviously, if we were to do so, there would be much less need for the presumption against pre-emption (which the commentator also criticizes). As matters now stand, however, the presumption reduces the risk that federal judges will draw too deeply on malleable and politically unaccountable sources such as regulatory history in finding pre-emption based on frustration of purposes.

23 The Court brushes aside our specificity requirement on the ground that the cases in which we relied upon it were not cases of implied conflict pre-emption. Ante, at 884. The Court is quite correct that Hillsborough County v. Automated Medical Laboratories, Inc., 471 U. S. 707 (1985), and California Coastal Comm'n v. Granite Rock Co., 480 U. S. 572 (1987), are cases in which field pre-emption, rather than conflict pre-emption, was at issue. This distinction, however, does not take the Court as far as it

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