Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 960.0

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Unit: $U62

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 861 (2000)

885

Opinion of the Court

Indeed, one can assume that Congress or an agency ordi-
narily would not intend to permit a signiﬁcant conﬂict.
While we certainly accept the dissent’s basic position that a
court should not ﬁnd pre-emption too readily in the absence
of clear evidence of a conﬂict, English, supra, at 90, for the
reasons set out above we ﬁnd such evidence here. To insist
on a speciﬁc expression of agency intent to pre-empt, made
after notice-and-comment rulemaking, would be in certain
cases to tolerate conﬂicts that an agency, and therefore Con-
gress, is most unlikely to have intended. The dissent, as we
have said, apparently welcomes that result, at least where
“frustration-of-purpos[e]” pre-emption by agency regulation
is at issue. Post, at 907–908, and n. 22. We do not.

Nor do we agree with the dissent that the agency’s views,
as presented here, lack coherence. Post, at 904–905. The
dissent points, ibid., to language in the Government’s brief
stating that

“a claim that a manufacturer should have chosen to in-
stall airbags rather than another type of passive re-
straint in a certain model of car because of other design
features particular to that car . . . would not necessarily
frustrate Standard 208’s purposes.” Brief for United
States as Amicus Curiae 26, n. 23 (emphasis added).

And the dissent says that these words amount to a conces-
sion that there is no conﬂict in this very case. Post, at 905.
But that is not what the words say. Rather, as the italicized
phrase emphasizes, they simply leave open the question
whether FMVSS 208 would pre-empt a different kind of tort
case—one not at issue here.
It is possible that some special
design-related circumstance concerning a particular kind of
car might require airbags, rather than automatic belts, and
that a suit seeking to impose that requirement could escape
pre-emption—say, because it would affect so few cars that
its rule of law would not create a legal “obstacle” to 208’s
mixed-ﬂeet, gradual objective. But that is not what peti-