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Page Number: 25

4 

ONEOK, INC. v. LEARJET, INC. 

SCALIA, J., dissenting 

which  we  have  sustained  state  regulation  of  behavior 
already regulated by the Commission.  The Court’s justifi-
cations for its novel approach do not persuade. 

A 
The Court begins by considering “the target at which the 
state law aims.”  Ante, at 11.  It reasons that because this 
case  involves  a  practice  that  affects  both  wholesale  and 
retail  rates,  the  Act  tolerates  state  regulation  that  takes 
aim at the practice’s retail-stage effects.  Ibid. 

This analysis misunderstands how the Natural Gas Act 
divides responsibilities between national and local regula-
tors.  The Act does not give the Commission the power to
aim  at  particular  effects;  it  gives  it  the  power  to  regulate 
particular  activities.    When  the  Commission  regulates
those activities, it may consider their effects on all parts of 
the  gas  trade,  not  just  on  wholesale  sales.   It  may,  for 
example, set wholesale rates with the aim of encouraging 
producers  to  conserve  gas  supplies—even  though  produc-
tion is a state-regulated activity.  See  Colorado Interstate 
Gas Co. v. FPC, 324 U. S. 581, 602–603 (1945); id., at 609– 
610  (Jackson,  J.,  concurring).    Or  it  may  regulate  whole-
sale sales with an eye toward blunting the sales’ anticom-
petitive  effects  in  the  retail  market—even  though  retail 
prices  are  controlled  by  the  States.    See  FPC  v.  Conway 
Corp., 426  U. S. 271, 276–280 (1976).  The Court’s ad hoc 
partition of authority over index manipulation—leaving it
to  the  Commission  to  control  the  practice’s  consequences 
for  wholesale  sales,  but  allowing  the  States  to  target  its
consequences  for  retail  sales—thus  clashes  with  the  de-
sign of the Act.

To  justify  its  fixation  on  aims,  the  Court  stresses  that 
this  case  involves  regulation  of  “background  marketplace 
conditions”  rather  than  regulation  of  wholesale  rates  or 
sales  themselves.    Ante,  at  15.  But  the  Natural  Gas  Act 
empowers the Commission to regulate wholesale rates and