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Page Number: 25.0

Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

21 

Opinion of the Court 

laws and regulations.”  Id., at 761–762.  FERC was decided 
well  before  our  decisions  in  New  York  and  Printz,  and 
PASPA,  unlike  the  law  in  FERC,  does  far  more  than  re­
quire  States  to  consider  Congress’s  preference  that  the
legalization of sports gambling be halted.  See Printz, 521 
U. S., at 929 (distinguishing FERC ).

In  sum,  none  of  the  prior  decisions  on  which  respond­
ents and the United States rely involved federal laws that 
commandeered  the  state  legislative  process.    None  con­
cerned  laws  that  directed  the  States  either  to  enact  or  to 
refrain from enacting a regulation of the conduct of activi­
ties  occurring  within  their  borders.    Therefore,  none  of 
these  precedents  supports  the  constitutionality  of  the 
PASPA provision at issue here. 

V 
Respondents  and  the  United  States  defend  the  anti-
authorization prohibition on the ground that it constitutes 
a  valid  preemption  provision,  but  it  is  no  such  thing. 
Preemption  is  based  on  the  Supremacy  Clause,  and  that 
Clause is not an independent grant of legislative power to
Congress.  Instead, it simply provides “a rule of decision.” 
Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U. S. ___, 
___  (2015)  (slip  op.,  at  3).    It  specifies  that  federal  law  is
supreme in case of a conflict with state law.  Therefore, in 
order  for  the  PASPA  provision  to  preempt  state  law,  it 
must  satisfy  two  requirements.    First,  it  must  represent
the exercise of a power conferred on Congress by the Con­
stitution;  pointing  to  the  Supremacy  Clause  will  not  do. 
Second, since the Constitution “confers upon Congress the
power to regulate individuals, not States,” New York, 505 
U. S.,  at  166,  the  PASPA  provision  at  issue  must  be  best
read as one that regulates private actors.

Our  cases  have  identified  three  different  types  of
preemption—“conflict,”  “express,”  and  “field,”  see  English 
v. General Elec. Co., 496 U. S. 72, 78–79 (1990)—but all of