The Supremacy Clause comes into play and preempts state law in three circumstances: when Congress expressly provides for preemption; when Congress regulates a subject area so extensively that its clear intent is to have federal law expressly control the area; and when a court concludes that Congress impliedly intended to preempt state law, and the state law actually conflicts with a federal statute or regulation.
But what gets preempted? What exactly did the Framers mean by "any Thing in the . . . laws of any state"? Courts have had an easy time deciding that state statutes and administrative regulations are unenforceable where Congress expressly or impliedly intended a federal law to have preemptive effect. Courts have a harder time deciding which state–law tort suits — in which the plaintiffs’ liability theory hinges on holding the defendant to a duty different from the duty imposed by federal law — are preempted by federal law.
Medtronic Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470 (1996), demonstrated just how tricky state–law tort–claim preemption can be. In Medtronic, the issue was whether a state–law product–defect claim against a medical–device manufacturer was preempted by the Medical Device Amendments of 1976 to the federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.
Five justices did agree that state–law tort actions do have the potential to conflict with federal laws. Successful tort claims impose "requirements" on a manufacturer just as surely as a "positive" state law like state legislative enactments or regulations. After all, a primary purpose of imposing tort liability is altering behavior.
Nevertheless, the court in Medtronic focused on the limits of preemption. For example, the preemption of state laws implicates important issues of federalism, because the states are independent sovereigns within the federal system. See also Cippolone v. Liggett Group Inc., 505 U.S. 504 (1992).
In fact, where states historically have exercised their police power, such as for the protection of the health and safety of their citizens, courts have applied a "presumption against preemption," absent a showing of a "clear and manifest purpose of Congress." Medtronic.
With this framework in mind, the Medtronic court went on to conclude that the intent of Congress, reflected in the language and legislative history of the Medical Device Amendments, was to preempt only positive state law. Since the plaintiff’s state–law tort claims were not positive law, they were not preempted.
The court returned to state–law tort–claim preemption issues in May, in a case involving a federal motor–vehicle safety law. In Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 120 S. Ct. 1913 (2000), the plaintiff was injured in an automobile accident. She sued the manufacturer of her car, alleging that its product — a 1987 Honda Accord — was defective because it was not equipped with a driver–side airbag.
In its defense, Honda contended that "no–airbag" tort claims like Geier’s were preempted by the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, as amended. When Geier’s Honda was manufactured, one of the regulations promulgated under the Safety Act did require automobile manufacturers to install passive–restraint safety equipment in cars. But the regulation permitted manufacturers to comply by selecting either airbags or automatic seat belts. There was no question that Honda complied with this federal requirement because it had installed automatic seat belts in Geier’s Honda.
Honda thus contended that Geier should not be allowed to use a state–law tort claim to hold Honda to a duty to have installed one safety option — an airbag — even though federal law specifically afforded it a choice to select another alternative — automatic seat belts.
As with all preemption cases, the answer in Geier had to turn on the intent of Congress. But the Safety Act had two seemingly contradictory provisions — a preemption clause and a saving clause — which had resulted in years of conflicting preemption case law.
The preemption clause of the Safety Act provided that, whenever a federal motor–vehicle safety standard was established, "no State or political subdivision of a State shall have any authority either to establish . . . any safety standard . . . which is not identical to the Federal standard." 15 U.S.C. § 1392(d) (1988).
On the other hand, the saving clause stated that "[c]ompliance with" a federal motor–vehicle safety standard "does not exempt a person from liability at common law." 15 U.S.C. § 1397(k) (1988).
In reviewing these two clauses in conjunction, the court in Geier concluded that the preemption clause was not intended to be a broad, express preemption of all state–law tort claims touching on motor–vehicle safety. Read alone, the court acknowledged that the preemption clause could bar, for example, a state design–defect claim for failure to install anti–lock brakes, because a tangential federal safety standard established minimum requirements for brake performance.
The presence of the saving clause, however, limited the preemption clause and prevented it from broadly preempting every state–law tort action touching on motor–vehicle safety.
Despite its limiting effect on express preemption, the court concluded that the saving clause did not limit implied preemption and was not intended to alter "the ordinary working of conflict preemption principles." Accordingly, the court concluded that the saving clause was not intended to save state–law tort actions that actually do conflict with absolute federal regulations. When the court reviewed the airbag installation duty Geier sought to impose through her tort claims, it concluded that those claims did actually conflict with the federal regulation that allowed manufacturers to install automatic seat belts as an alternative to airbags. As a result, the tort claims were preempted, and Honda was entitled to summary judgment in its favor.
The analysis used by the majority in Geier is interesting in that it did not rely on the presumption against preemption that guided the court in Medtronic and other cases. Instead, the majority concluded that the Safety Act’s preemption and saving clauses together reflected a neutral policy toward preemption. While the preemption clause favored preemption of state–law tort claims to achieve uniformity in safety standards, the saving clause reflected a policy opposed to preemption (since it reflected Congress’s determination that occasional nonuniformity in safety standards resulting from state–law tort claims is acceptable in a system where juries can create safety standards and victims can obtain compensation for their injuries).
The conflicting policies neutralized one another, and, thus, the court simply looked for a conflict between the state–law tort claims and federal law, without any bias against preemption of state–law claims. This approach toward preemption drew four dissenters, who argued that principles of federalism require more deference to state laws, particularly in the areas of health and welfare, where the states historically have exercised their police powers.
In the years before Geier, many of the U.S. circuit courts interpreted the Safety Act and the safety regulation in question to mean that Congress intended to preempt state–law tort claims, while several state supreme courts held that Congress did not. See Geier (listing cases). California’s courts also had concluded that the Safety Act did not preempt state–law tort claims. See Ketchum v. Hyundai Motor Co., 49 Cal. App. 4th 1672 (1996).
Geier resolved this long–standing conflict. And looking toward the future, Geier’s most obvious impact will be to curtail other design–defect claims premised on the theory that auto manufacturers had a duty to install airbags at the time federal law allowed them to satisfy the Safety Act by installing other passive–restraint systems.
But since the court’s close inspection of the competing policies reflected by preemption and saving clauses and its refusal to apply a blanket presumption against preemption involve general preemption principles, Geier should provide some guidance whenever it is claimed that a state–law tort action is preempted by federal law.
Yet Geier was decided on a 5–4 vote, with the dissenters strongly arguing for a presumption against preemption. And since only the thinnest of majorities found federal preemption in Geier, the presumption against preemption could be revitalized with a shift of only vote.