American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, 539 U.S. 396, 33 (2003)

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428

AMERICAN INS. ASSN. v. GARAMENDI

Opinion of the Court

§ 1012(a), which will be good against preemption by federal legislation unless that legislation "specifically relates to the business of insurance," § 1012(b); see also § 1011 (policy behind § 1012 is that "continued regulation and taxation by the several States of the business of insurance is in the public interest" and "silence on the part of the Congress shall not be construed to impose any barrier to the regulation or taxation of such business by the several States"). As the text itself makes clear, the point of McCarran-Ferguson's legislative choice of leaving insurance regulation generally to the States was to limit congressional preemption under the commerce power, whether dormant or exercised. Compare Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U. S. 408, 429-430 (1946), with United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Assn., 322 U. S. 533 (1944); see Department of Treasury v. Fabe, 508 U. S. 491, 499-500 (1993). Quite apart, then, from any doubt whether HVIRA would qualify as regulating "the business of insurance" given its tangential relation to present-day insuring in the State, see FTC v. Travelers Health Assn., 362 U. S. 293, 300-301 (1960) (McCarran-Ferguson was not intended to allow a State to "regulate activities carried on beyond its own borders"), a federal statute directed to implied preemption by domestic commerce legislation cannot sensibly be construed to address preemption by executive conduct in foreign affairs.

Nor does the Holocaust Commission Act authorize HVIRA. That Act set up a Presidential Commission to "study and develop a historical record of the collection and disposition" of Holocaust-era assets that "came into the possession or control of the Federal Government." Pub. L. 105-186, § 3(a)(1), 112 Stat. 612. For this purpose, Congress directed the Commission to "encourage the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to prepare a report on the Holocaust-related claims practices of all insurance companies, both domestic and foreign, doing business in the

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