Also known as: pre-emption doctrine · preemption doctrine · doctrine of preemption · federal preemption · preemption
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A constitutional principle under which valid federal law supersedes conflicting state law pursuant to the Supremacy Clause. The principle operates when federal policy occupies a field or creates a direct conflict that state measures cannot overcome.
Dominic Drake, a sports betting operator, sought state authorization to open facilities in a jurisdiction where federal law barred states from licensing such schemes. State officials refused the application citing the federal prohibition. Drake sued, arguing the federal measure improperly directed state legislative choices rather than regulating private conduct directly. The court invalidated the federal directive as outside preemption bounds.
Daphne Doyle purchased a vehicle without airbags and later suffered injuries in a crash. She sued the manufacturer under state tort law for failing to install the feature. Federal regulations had permitted phased introduction of multiple restraint options. The court held that the state claim conflicted with the federal objective and could not proceed.
In 1987, petitioner Alexis Geier, then four months old, was a passenger in a 1987 Honda Accord that crashed into a tree. The car was equipped with manual shoulder and lap belts but had no airbag. The lap and shoulder belt did not prevent Alexis from striking her head on the dashboard, and she suffered serious injuries as a result. Alexis and her parents sued the car's manufacturer, American Honda Motor Company, Inc., and its American distributor, Honda of America Manufacturing, Inc., in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. They claimed that American Honda had designed its car negligently and defectively because it lacked a driver's side airbag. American Honda moved for summary judgment on the ground that the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 and FMVSS 208 preempted the lawsuit. The District Court dismissed the lawsuit. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the dismissal. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether the Act or the safety standard preempts a no-airbag lawsuit. FMVSS 208, promulgated under the Act, required auto manufacturers to equip some but not all of their 1987 and later model vehicles with passive restraints. The standard required manufacturers to equip 10 percent of their 1987 vehicles, 25 percent of their 1988 vehicles, 40 percent of their 1989 vehicles, and 100 percent of their 1990 and later vehicles with one of several different passive restraint systems, including airbags, automatic safety belts, or other passive restraints providing at least the same level of crash protection.
View caseDylan Duffy sought to build a nuclear facility and obtained federal construction approval. State regulators imposed additional effluent limits stricter than federal rules. Duffy sued to block enforcement of the state limits. The court ruled that federal authority over plant operation displaced the conflicting state requirements.
By the late 1970s, spent nuclear fuel had accumulated at reactor sites across the country, totaling some 8,000 metric tons with projections of 72,000 metric tons by the year 2000. Government studies indicated that several reactors could be forced to shut down in the near future due to insufficient storage capacity in on-site pools. California responded to these concerns and the absence of a permanent disposal method by amending its energy laws in 1976. In 1974 California had enacted the Warren-Alquist State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Act. The Act requires any utility seeking to construct an electric power generating plant, including a nuclear facility, to obtain certification from the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission after a multi-stage review process. The Warren-Alquist Act was amended in 1976 to provide additional state regulation of new nuclear powerplant construction. This section directs the Commission to determine on a case-by-case basis that adequate storage capacity for spent fuel rods will exist when needed. Each utility must also maintain continuous on-site full core reserve storage capacity. Section 25524.2 established a moratorium on the certification of new nuclear plants. Certification is barred until the Commission finds that a demonstrated technology or means for the permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste has been developed and approved by the United States. In 1978 petitioners Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison Co. filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. They sought a declaratory judgment that the two sections and other provisions of the Warren-Alquist Act were pre-empted by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The District Court held that the petitioners had standing, that the challenges were ripe, and that both sections were invalid as pre-empted. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed standing and ripeness as to section 25524.2 but held the challenge to section 25524.1(b) unripe. On the merits, the court held that the nuclear moratorium provisions of § 25524.2 were not pre-empted because §§ 271 and 274(k) of the Atomic Energy Act constitute a congressional authorization for States to regulate nuclear powerplants for purposes other than protection against radiation hazards. The Supreme Court granted certiorari limited to the ripeness of the challenges to both sections and the pre-emption of section 25524.2.
View caseDanielle Dixon and other landowners sued power companies alleging harm from carbon emissions under state nuisance law. Federal statutes already addressed nationwide emissions through agency rules. The companies moved to dismiss on preemption grounds. The court found the federal scheme displaced the state claims.
In July 2004, two groups of plaintiffs filed separate complaints in the Southern District of New York against the same five major electric power companies. The first group included eight States and New York City. The second group joined three nonprofit land trusts. The defendants were four private companies and the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned corporation. According to the complaints, the defendants are the five largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the United States, with collective annual emissions of 650 million tons constituting 25 percent of emissions from the domestic electric power sector. The plaintiffs asserted that by contributing to global warming, the defendants’ carbon-dioxide emissions created a substantial and unreasonable interference with public rights, in violation of the federal common law of interstate nuisance or state tort law. The States and New York City alleged that public lands, infrastructure, and health were at risk from climate change. The trusts urged that climate change would destroy habitats for animals and rare species on land they owned and conserved. All plaintiffs sought injunctive relief requiring each defendant to cap its carbon dioxide emissions and then reduce them by a specified percentage each year for at least a decade. The District Court dismissed both suits as presenting non-justiciable political questions. The Second Circuit reversed. On threshold questions, the Court of Appeals held that the suits were not barred by the political question doctrine and that the plaintiffs had adequately alleged Article III standing. Turning to the merits, the Second Circuit held that all plaintiffs had stated a claim under the federal common law of nuisance and that the Clean Air Act did not displace federal common law. Responding to the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency undertook greenhouse gas regulation. In December 2009, the Agency concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. EPA issued a joint final rule regulating emissions from light-duty vehicles and initiated a joint rulemaking covering medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. EPA also began phasing in requirements that new or modified major greenhouse gas emitting facilities use the best available control technology and commenced a rulemaking under section 111 of the Act to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new, modified, and existing fossil-fuel fired powerplants. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2010. Four Members of the Court would hold that at least some plaintiffs have Article III standing under Massachusetts v. EPA, while four Members would hold that none of the plaintiffs have Article III standing. The Court therefore affirmed, by an equally divided Court, the Second Circuit’s exercise of jurisdiction and proceeded to the merits.
View caseDarius Dixon, a broadcaster, published a crime victim's name obtained from public court records. State law imposed liability for the disclosure. Federal constitutional protections applied to the publication. The court held that the state rule could not stand against the federal standard.
In August 1971, appellee Cohn's 17-year-old daughter was raped and murdered in Georgia. Six youths were indicted for murder and rape. Although there was substantial press coverage of the crime and of subsequent developments, the identity of the victim was not disclosed pending trial, perhaps because of Ga. Code Ann. § 26-9901 (1972). In April 1972, during court proceedings in which five defendants entered guilty pleas, reporter Wassell for petitioner Cox Broadcasting Corporation examined the indictments made available in the courtroom. Wassell obtained the victim's name from those public records and broadcast it on WSB-TV that day and again the following day. In May 1972, Cohn filed suit in the Superior Court of Fulton County against Cox Broadcasting and Wassell. The complaint alleged invasion of privacy arising from the television broadcasts that named his deceased daughter and sought money damages. The trial court granted summary judgment to Cohn on the issue of liability. The Georgia Supreme Court initially held that the complaint stated a common-law claim for public disclosure. On rehearing the court sustained the constitutionality of the state statute prohibiting publication of a rape victim's name. The United States Supreme Court postponed decision on jurisdiction to the hearing on the merits and reviewed the case after the Georgia Supreme Court rejected the constitutional challenge to liability.
View caseDiego Duarte developed a manufacturing process and protected it as a trade secret under state law. A competitor argued that federal patent standards controlled and preempted the state protection. The court examined whether the state regime conflicted with federal patent objectives. It concluded that the state law survived because it did not directly clash with federal patent policy.
Harshaw Chemical Co., an unincorporated division of petitioner Kewanee Oil Co., commenced research in 1949 into the growth of synthetic crystals useful in the detection of ionizing radiation and was able to produce one less than two inches in diameter. By 1966, as the result of expenditures in excess of one million dollars, Harshaw was able to grow a seventeen-inch crystal, something no one else had done previously. Harshaw had developed many processes, procedures, and manufacturing techniques in the purification of raw materials and the growth and encapsulation of the crystals which enabled it to accomplish this feat. Some of these processes Harshaw considers to be trade secrets. The individual respondents are former employees of Harshaw who formed or later joined respondent Bicron. While at Harshaw the individual respondents executed, as a condition of employment, at least one agreement each, requiring them not to disclose confidential information or trade secrets obtained as employees of Harshaw. Bicron was formed in August 1969 to compete with Harshaw in the production of the crystals, and by April 1970 had grown a seventeen-inch crystal. Petitioner brought this diversity action in United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio seeking injunctive relief and damages for the misappropriation of trade secrets. The District Court, applying Ohio trade secret law, granted a permanent injunction against the disclosure or use by respondents of twenty of the forty claimed trade secrets until such time as the trade secrets had been released to the public, had otherwise generally become available to the public, or had been obtained by respondents from sources having the legal right to convey the information. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the findings of fact by the District Court were not clearly erroneous and that the District Court properly applied Ohio law relating to trade secrets. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court, finding Ohio's trade secret law to be in conflict with the patent laws of the United States. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a question on which there is a conflict in the courts of appeals: whether state trade secret protection is preempted by operation of the federal patent law.
View caseThe doctrine of pre-emption displaces conflicting state law under the Supremacy Clause when federal policy occupies a field or creates an obstacle. Anti-commandeering prevents Congress from ordering states to enact or enforce federal programs. A federal measure that targets only state legislative action rather than private conduct falls outside valid preemption.
No. Conflict preemption or field preemption can arise even without explicit statutory language when state rules stand as an obstacle to federal objectives or when Congress intends exclusive federal regulation.
A state rule survives when it does not conflict with federal standards and Congress has not occupied the entire field. Traditional state functions such as insurance approval or port safety may continue if they do not undermine federal objectives.
…which see Norfolk & Western Ry. v. Train Dispatchers , 499 U.S. 117, 111 S.Ct. 1156, 113 L.Ed.2d 95 (1991)—courts usually read preemption clauses to leave private contracts unaffected. American Airlines, Inc. v. Wolens , — U.S. —, 115 S.Ct. 817, 130 L.Ed.2d 715 (1995), provides a nice illustration. A federal statute preempts…