Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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Cite as: 529 U. S. 861 (2000)

873

Opinion of the Court

Court did not hold that the Safety Act does create a “special
burden,” or still less that such a burden necessarily arises
from the limits of an express pre-emption provision. And
considerations of
language, purpose, and administrative
workability, together with the principles underlying this
Court’s pre-emption doctrine discussed above, make clear
that the express pre-emption provision imposes no unusual,
“special burden” against pre-emption. For similar reasons,
we do not see the basis for interpreting the saving clause to
impose any such burden.

A “special burden” would also promise practical difﬁculty
by further complicating well-established pre-emption princi-
ples that already are difﬁcult to apply. The dissent does not
contend that this “special burden” would apply in a case in
which state law penalizes what federal law requires—i. e., a
case of impossibility. See post, at 892–893, n. 6, 900, n. 16.
But if it would not apply in such a case, then how, or when,
would it apply? This Court, when describing conﬂict pre-
emption, has spoken of pre-empting state law that “under
the circumstances of th[e] particular case . . . stands as an
obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full pur-
poses and objectives of Congress”—whether that “obstacle”
goes by the name of “conﬂicting; contrary to; . . . repugnance;
difference; irreconcilability; inconsistency; violation; curtail-
ment; . . . interference,” or the like. Hines v. Davidowitz,
312 U. S. 52, 67 (1941); see Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430
U. S. 519, 526 (1977). The Court has not previously driven a
legal wedge—only a terminological one—between “conﬂicts”
that prevent or frustrate the accomplishment of a federal
objective and “conﬂicts” that make it “impossible” for pri-
vate parties to comply with both state and federal
law.
Rather, it has said that both forms of conﬂicting state law
are “nulliﬁed” by the Supremacy Clause, De la Cuesta, 458
U. S., at 152–153; see Locke, ante, at 109; English v. General
Elec. Co., 496 U. S. 72, 78–79 (1990), and it has assumed that
Congress would not want either kind of conﬂict. The Court