Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 435.0

529US2

Unit: $U45

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NORFOLK SOUTHERN R. CO. v. SHANKLIN

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

agency remains free to amend its regulations to achieve the
commonsense result that the Government itself now seeks.
With that understanding, I join the majority’s opinion.

Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens joins,

dissenting.

A fatal accident occurred on October 3, 1993, at a railroad
crossing in Gibson County, Tennessee. The crossing was
equipped not with automatic gates or ﬂashing lights, but
only with basic warning signs installed with federal funds
provided under the Federal Railway-Highway Crossings
Program. See 23 U. S. C. § 130. This federal program
. .
aimed to ensure that States would, “[a]t a minimum, .
provide signs for all railway-highway crossings.” § 130(d).
No authority, federal or state, has found that the signs in
place at the scene of the Gibson County accident were ade-
quate to protect safety, as distinguished from being a bare
minimum. Nevertheless, the Court today holds that whole-
sale federal
improvements at 196 crossings
throughout 11 west Tennessee counties preempts all state
regulation of safety devices at each individual crossing. As
a result, respondent Dedra Shanklin cannot recover under
state tort law for the railroad’s failure to install adequate
devices. And the State of Tennessee, because it used fed-
is
eral money to provide at least minimum protection,
stopped from requiring the installation of adequate devices
at any of the funded crossings.

funding of

The upshot of the Court’s decision is that state negligence
law is displaced with no substantive federal standard of
conduct to ﬁll the void. That outcome deﬁes common sense
and sound policy. Federal regulations already provide that
railroads shall not be required to pay any share of the cost
of federally ﬁnanced grade crossing improvements. 23 CFR
§ 646.210(b)(1) (1999). Today the railroads have achieved a
double windfall: the Federal Government foots the bill for
installing safety devices; and that same federal expenditure