Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-529_1b7d.pdf
Page Number: 11

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

bank’s  ability  to  exercise  a  power—selling  insurance—
authorized  by  federal  law.  Id.,  at  33–35.  Importantly, 
Barnett  Bank  made  clear  that  a  non-discriminatory  state
banking law can be preempted even if it is possible for the 
national bank to comply with both federal and state law—
there, by declining to sell insurance.  Id., at 31.  The Court 
emphasized that federal law’s “grants of both enumerated
and  incidental  ‘powers’  to  national  banks”  are  “grants  of 
authority  not  normally  limited  by,  but  rather  ordinarily 
pre-empting, contrary state law.”  Id., at 32.  Congress had 
afforded national banks a “broad, not a limited,” power to 
sell  insurance—a  power  “without  relevant  qualification.” 
Ibid.  The Court reasoned that “normally Congress would 
not  want  States  to  forbid,  or  to  impair  significantly,  the 
exercise of a power that Congress explicitly granted.”  Id., 
at 33.  Because federal law “explicitly grant[ed] a national 
bank  an  authorization,  permission,  or  power”  with  “no
indication that Congress intended to subject that power to
local restriction,” the Court concluded that state law could 
not  limit  national  banks’  ability  to  sell  insurance.    Id.,  at 
34–35  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted);  see  id.,  at  37. 
But the Court added that its ruling did not “deprive States
of the power to regulate national banks, where (unlike here) 
doing so does not prevent or significantly interfere with the 
national bank’s exercise of its powers.”  Id., at 33. 

In  short,  Barnett  Bank  decided 

the  non-
discriminatory  Florida  law  at  issue  there  significantly
interfered with the bank’s exercise of its powers, and thus 
was preempted. 

that 

B 
But Barnett Bank did not purport to establish a clear line 
to  demarcate  when  a  state  law  “significantly  interfere[s] 
with  the  national  bank’s  exercise  of  its  powers.” 
Ibid. 
Instead, the Court analyzed the Court’s precedents on that
issue.    Specifically,  to  determine  whether  the  Florida  law