Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 165

529US1

Unit: $U35

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90

UNITED STATES v. LOCKE

Syllabus

validity of other Washington regulations may be assessed in light of the
considerable federal interest at stake. Pp. 99–117.

(a) The State has enacted legislation in an area where the federal
interest has been manifest since the beginning of the Republic and is
now well established. Congress has, beginning with the Tank Vessel
Act of 1936, enacted a series of statutes pertaining to maritime tanker
transports. These include the PWSA, Title I of which authorizes, but
does not require, the Coast Guard to enact measures for controlling
vessel trafﬁc or for protecting navigation and the marine environment,
33 U. S. C. § 1223(a), and Title II of which, as amended, requires the
Coast Guard to issue regulations addressing the design, construction,
alteration, repair, maintenance, operation, equipping, personnel qualiﬁ-
cation, and manning of covered vessels, 46 U. S. C. § 3703(a). Congress
later enacted OPA, Title I of which, among other things, imposes liabil-
ity for both removal costs and damages on parties responsible for an oil
spill, 33 U. S. C. § 2702, and includes two saving clauses preserving the
States’ authority to impose additional liability, requirements, and penal-
ties, §§ 2718(a) and (c). Congress has also ratiﬁed international agree-
ments in this area, including the International Convention of Standards
of Training Certiﬁcation and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW).
Pp. 99–103.

(b) In Ray, the Court held that the PWSA and Coast Guard regula-
tions promulgated under that Act pre-empted Washington’s pilotage re-
quirement, limitation on tanker size, and tanker design and construction
rules. The Ray Court’s interpretation of the PWSA is correct and con-
trolling here.
Its basic analytic structure explains why federal pre-
emption analysis applies to the challenged regulations and allows scope
and due recognition for the traditional authority of the States and locali-
ties to regulate some matters of local concern.
In narrowing the pre-
emptive effect given the PWSA in Ray, the Ninth Circuit placed more
weight on OPA’s saving clauses than they can bear. Like Title I of
OPA, in which they are found, the saving clauses are limited to regula-
tions governing liability and compensation for oil pollution, and do not
extend to rules regulating vessel operation, design, or manning. Thus,
the pre-emptive effect of the PWSA and its regulations is not affected
by OPA, and Ray’s holding survives OPA’s enactment undiminished.
The Ray Court’s prefatory observation that an “assumption” that the
States’ historic police powers were not to be superseded by federal law
unless that was the clear and manifest congressional purpose does not
mean that a presumption against pre-emption aids the Court’s analysis
here. An assumption of nonpre-emption is not triggered when the
State regulates in an area where there has been a history of signiﬁcant
federal presence. The Ray Court held, among other things, that Con-