68
Opinion of the Court
ment and execution' " ' of those objectives . . . . Congress has delegated to DOT authority to implement the statute; the subject matter is technical; and the relevant history and background are complex and extensive. The agency is likely to have a thorough understanding of its own regulation and its objectives and is 'uniquely qualified' to comprehend the likely impact of state requirements." Id., at 883. In the case before us today, the Solicitor General, joined by counsel for the Coast Guard, has informed us that the agency does not view the 1990 refusal to regulate or any subsequent regulatory actions by the Coast Guard as having any preemptive effect. Our reasoning in Geier therefore provides strong support for petitioner's submission.
V
Even though the refusal to regulate propeller guards in 1990 had no pre-emptive effect, it is possible that the statutory scheme as a whole implicitly pre-empted common-law claims such as petitioner's when it was enacted in 1971. If that were so, the exemption carried forward by the Secretary in 1973 after the first federal regulations were adopted might have saved existing state common-law rules "in effect on the effective date" of the 1971 Act, so far as those rules relate to propeller guards. 38 Fed. Reg., at 6915. But even if that is not the case, we think it clear that the FBSA did not so completely occupy the field of safety regulation of recreational boats as to foreclose state common-law remedies.
In Ray v. Atlantic Richfield Co., 435 U. S. 151 (1978), we considered a federal statute that directed the Secretary of Transportation to determine "which oil tankers are sufficiently safe to be allowed to proceed in the navigable waters of the United States," and after inspection to certify "each vessel as sufficiently safe to protect the marine environment." Id., at 163, 165. We held that this scheme of mandatory federal regulation implicitly pre-empted the power of the State of Washington "to exclude from Puget Sound ves-
Page: Index Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007