Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-271_j4ek.pdf
Page Number: 16.0

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

13 

Opinion of the Court 

as well as retail—investment costs).  Id., at 308, n. 11. 

Antitrust  laws,  like  blue  sky  laws,  are  not  aimed  at 

natural-gas  companies  in  particular,  but  rather  all  busi­
nesses in the marketplace.  See ibid.  They are far broader
in  their  application  than,  for  example,  the  regulations  at 
issue  in  Northern  Natural,  which  applied  only  to  entities
buying gas from fields within the State.  See 372 U. S., at 
85–86,  n. 1;  contra,  post,  at  5–6  (stating  that  Northern 
Natural concerned “background market conditions”).  This 
broad  applicability  of  state  antitrust  law  supports  a  find­
ing of no pre-emption here. 

Petitioners  and  the  dissent  argue  that  there  is,  or
should  be,  a  clear  division  between  areas  of  state  and 
federal  authority  in  natural-gas  regulation.  See  Brief  for 
Petitioners 18; post, at 7.  But that Platonic ideal does not 
describe  the  natural  gas  regulatory  world.    Suppose 
FERC, when setting wholesale rates in the former cost-of­
service  rate-making  days,  had  denied  cost  recovery  for
pipelines’  failure  to  recycle.  Would  that  fact  deny  States
the power to enact and apply recycling laws?  These state 
laws  might  well  raise pipelines’  operating  costs,  and  thus
the costs of wholesale natural gas transportation.  But in 
Northwest Central we said that “[t]o find field pre-emption
of [state] regulation merely because purchasers’ costs and
hence  rates  might  be  affected  would  be  largely  to  nullify 
. . . §1(b).”  489 U. S., at 514. 

The  dissent  barely  mentions  the  limitations  on  FERC’s 
powers in §1(b), but the enumeration of FERC’s powers in
§5(a)  is  circumscribed  by  a  reference  back  to  the  limita­
tions  in  §1(b).    See  post,  at  1–3.  As  we  explained  above, 
see Part I–B–1, supra, those limits are key to understand­
ing  the  careful  balance  between  federal  and  state  regula­
tion that Congress struck when it passed the Natural Gas 
Act.  That Act “was drawn with meticulous regard for the 
continued  exercise  of  state  power,  not  to  handicap  or 
dilute  it  in  any  way.”    Panhandle  Eastern,  332  U. S.,  at