Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-271_j4ek.pdf
Page Number: 4.0

Cite as:  575 U. S. ____ (2015) 

1 

Opinion of the Court 

NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary  print  of  the  United  States  Reports.  Readers  are  requested  to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash­
ington,  D. C.  20543,  of  any  typographical  or  other  formal  errors,  in  order
that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

_________________ 

No. 13–271 
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ONEOK, INC., ET AL. PETITIONERS v.

 LEARJET, INC., ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[April 21, 2015] 

JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court. 
In  this  case,  a  group  of  manufacturers,  hospitals,  and 

other institutions that buy natural gas directly from inter­
state  pipelines  sued  the  pipelines,  claiming  that  they
engaged  in  behavior  that  violated  state  antitrust  laws.
The  pipelines’  behavior  affected  both  federally  regulated 
wholesale  natural-gas  prices  and  nonfederally  regulated 
retail  natural-gas  prices.  The  question  is  whether  the 
federal  Natural  Gas  Act  pre-empts  these  lawsuits.    We 
have said that, in passing the Act, “Congress occupied the
field of matters relating to wholesale sales and transporta­
tion of natural gas in interstate commerce.”  Schneidewind 
v. ANR Pipeline Co., 485 U. S. 293, 305 (1988).  Neverthe­
less, for the reasons given below, we conclude that the Act 
does  not  pre-empt  the  state-law  antitrust  suits  at  issue
here. 

I 

A 

The  Supremacy  Clause  provides  that  “the  Laws  of  the
United  States”  (as  well  as  treaties  and  the  Constitution 
itself )  “shall  be  the  supreme  Law  of  the  Land  . . .  any