Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 975.0

529US3

Unit: $U62

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GEIER v. AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO.

Stevens, J., dissenting

pre-empt common-law remedies.16 Moreover, the text of
Standard 208 says nothing about pre-emption, and I am not
persuaded that Honda has overcome our traditional pre-
sumption that it lacks any implicit pre-emptive effect.

Honda argues, and the Court now agrees, that the risk of
liability presented by common-law claims that vehicles with-
out airbags are negligently and defectively designed would
frustrate the policy decision that the Secretary made in
promulgating Standard 208. This decision, in their view,
was that safety—including a desire to encourage “public ac-
ceptance of the airbag technology and experimentation with
better passive restraint systems” 17—would best be promoted

16 The Court contends, in essence, that a saving clause cannot foreclose
implied conﬂict pre-emption. Ante, at 873–874. The cases it cites to
support that point, however, merely interpreted the language of the par-
ticular saving clauses at issue and concluded that those clauses did not
foreclose implied pre-emption; they do not establish that a saving clause
in a given statute cannot foreclose implied pre-emption based on frustra-
tion of that statute’s purposes, or even (more importantly for our present
purposes) that a saving clause in a given statute cannot deprive a regula-
tion issued pursuant to that statute of any implicit pre-emptive effect.
See United States v. Locke, ante, at 104–107; International Paper Co. v.
Ouellette, 479 U. S. 481, 493 (1987) (“Given that the Act itself does not
speak directly to the issue, the Court must be guided by the goals and
policies of the Act in determining whether it in fact pre-empts an action”);
Chicago & North Western Transp. Co. v. Kalo Brick & Tile Co., 450 U. S.
311, 328, 331 (1981). As stated in the text, I believe the language of this
particular saving clause unquestionably limits, and possibly forecloses en-
tirely, the pre-emptive effect that safety standards promulgated by the
Secretary have on common-law remedies. See Louisiana Pub. Serv.
Comm’n v. FCC, 476 U. S. 355, 374 (1986). Under that interpretation,
there is by deﬁnition no frustration of federal purposes—that is, no “toler-
at[ion of] actual conﬂict,” ante, at 874—when tort suits are allowed to go
forward. Thus, because there is a textual basis for concluding that Con-
gress intended to preserve the state law at issue, I think it entirely appro-
priate for the party favoring pre-emption to bear a special burden in at-
tempting to show that valid federal purposes would be frustrated if that
state law were not pre-empted.

17 166 F. 3d 1236, 1243 (CADC 1999).