American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, 539 U.S. 396, 30 (2003)

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Cite as: 539 U. S. 396 (2003)

Opinion of the Court

the United States to call on state legislatures "to refrain from taking unwarranted investigative initiatives or from threatening or actually using sanctions against Swiss insurers"). In addition to thwarting the Government's policy of repose for companies that pay through the ICHEIC, California's indiscriminate disclosure provisions place a handicap on the ICHEIC's effectiveness (and raise a further irritant to the European allies) by undercutting European privacy protections. See ER 1182, 3131 (opinions of the German Government that public disclosure of all European insurance policies "is not permissible" under German privacy law); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 18 (noting protests from the German and Swiss Governments). It is true, of course, as it is probably true of all elements of HVIRA, that the disclosure requirement's object of obtaining compensation for Holocaust victims is a goal espoused by the National Government as well. But "[t]he fact of a common end hardly neutralizes conflicting means," Crosby, supra, at 379, and here HVIRA is an obstacle to the success of the National Government's chosen "calibration of force" in dealing with the Europeans using a voluntary approach, 530 U. S., at 380.

B

The express federal policy and the clear conflict raised by the state statute are alone enough to require state law to yield. If any doubt about the clarity of the conflict remained, however, it would have to be resolved in the National Government's favor, given the weakness of the State's interest, against the backdrop of traditional state legislative subject matter, in regulating disclosure of European Holocaust-era insurance policies in the manner of HVIRA.

The commissioner would justify HVIRA's ambitious disclosure requirement as protecting "legitimate consumer protection interests" in knowing which insurers have failed to pay insurance claims. Brief for Respondent 1, 42-44. But, quite unlike a generally applicable "blue sky" law, HVIRA

425

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