Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525, 73 (2001)

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Cite as: 533 U. S. 525 (2001)

Opinion of Stevens, J.

636-640 (CA7 1999); Penn Advertising of Baltimore, Inc. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 63 F. 3d 1318 (CA4 1995); contra, Lindsey v. Tacoma-Pierce Cty. Health Dept., 195 F. 3d 1065 (CA9 1999). The decisions in those cases relied heavily upon our discussion of the same pre-emption provision in Cipollone, 505 U. S., at 515-524. In Cipollone, while the Members of the Court expressed three different opinions concerning the scope of pre-emption mandated by the provision, those differences related entirely to which, if any, of the plaintiff's claims based on the content of the defendants' advertising were pre-empted by § 5. Nary a word in any of the three Cipollone opinions supports the thesis that § 5 should be interpreted to pre-empt state regulation of the location of signs advertising cigarettes. Indeed, seven of the nine Justices subscribed to opinions that explicitly tethered the scope of the pre-emption provision to Congress' concern with "diverse, nonuniform, and confusing cigarette labeling and advertising regulations." Id., at 519; id., at 534, 541 (opinion of Blackmun, J., joined by Kennedy and Souter, JJ.).

I am firmly convinced that, when Congress amended the pre-emption provision in 1969, it did not intend to expand the application of the provision beyond content regulations.6

6 Petitioners suggest in passing that Massachusetts' regulation amounts to a "near-total ba[n]," Brief for Petitioners Lorillard Tobacco Co. et al. in No. 00-596, p. 22, and thus is a de facto regulation of the content of cigarette ads. But we need not consider today the circumstances in which location restrictions approximating a total ban might constitute regulation of content and thus be pre-empted by the Act, because petitioners have failed to introduce sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue as to that claim. Petitioners introduced maps purporting to show that cigarette advertising is barred in 90.6% of Boston proper, 87.8% of Worcester, and 88.8% of Springfield. See App. 165-167. But the maps do not distinguish between the area restricted due to the regulation at issue here and the area restricted due to pre-existing regulations, such as general zoning requirements applicable to all outdoor advertising. Nor do the maps show the percentage (with respect to either area or population) of the State that is off limits to cigarette advertising; they cover only three cities

597

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