6
Opinion of the Court
land to regulate the rates charged by a Rhode Island plant selling electricity to a Massachusetts company, which resold the electricity to the city of Attleboro, Massachusetts, we invalidated the regulation because it imposed a "direct burden upon interstate commerce." Public Util. Comm'n of R. I. v. Attleboro Steam & Elec. Co., 273 U. S. 83, 89 (1927). Creating what has become known as the "Attleboro gap," we held that this interstate transaction was not subject to regulation by either Rhode Island or Massachusetts, but only "by the exercise of the power vested in Congress." Id., at 90.
When it enacted the FPA in 1935,3 Congress authorized federal regulation of electricity in areas beyond the reach of state power, such as the gap identified in Attleboro, but it also extended federal coverage to some areas that previously had been state regulated, see, e. g., id., at 87-88 (explaining, prior to the FPA's enactment, that state regulations affecting interstate utility transactions were permissible if they did not directly burden interstate commerce). The FPA charged the Federal Power Commission (FPC), the predecessor of FERC, "to provide effective federal regulation of the expanding business of transmitting and selling electric power in interstate commerce." Gulf States Util. Co. v. FPC, 411 U. S. 747, 758 (1973). Specifically, in § 201(b) of the FPA, Congress recognized the FPC's jurisdiction as including "the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce" and "the sale of electric energy at wholesale in inter-Kan. v. Landon, 249 U. S. 236 (1919), but that a State could not regulate the rate at which gas from out-of-state producers was sold to independent distributing companies for resale to local consumers, Missouri ex rel. Barrett v. Kansas Natural Gas Co., 265 U. S. 298, 309 (1924).
3 The FPA was enacted as Title II of the Public Utility Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 847. Title I of the Public Utility Act—not at issue here—regulated financial practices of interstate holding companies that controlled a large number of public utilities.
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