Opinion ID: 746801
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Preemption under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Text: 22 The Supreme Court has held that the Occupational Safety and Health Act expresses Congress' clear and manifest intent to preempt state law. Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Ass'n, 505 U.S. 88, 112 S.Ct. 2374, 120 L.Ed.2d 73 (1992). In Gade, the plurality interpreted § 18 of the Act, 29 U.S.C. § 667, and held that unless a state plan is submitted to OSHA, the OSH Act pre-empts all state 'occupational safety and health standards relating to any occupational safety or health issue with respect to which a Federal standard has been promulgated.'  505 U.S. at 102, 112 S.Ct. at 2384 (emphasis supplied) (quoting 29 U.S.C. § 667(b)). The scope of preemption in each area in which a federal standard has been promulgated is complete. All state regulations relating to the issue of a federal standard are preempted even if they do not conflict with the federal scheme. Id. at 103, 112 S.Ct. at 2385. 23 This holding, by its very nature, establishes that the preemption worked by federal OSHA standards goes beyond conflict preemption. The majority in Gade held that principles of field preemption apply against any state law relating to the issue or subject matter of a federal standard. Id. at 104 n. 2, 112 S.Ct. at 2385 (plurality) (Although we have chosen to use the term 'conflict' pre-emption, we could as easily have stated that the promulgations of a federal safety and health standard 'pre-empts the field' for any nonapproved state law regulating the same safety and health issue.) (citing English, 496 U.S. at 79 n. 5, 110 S.Ct. at 2275 n. 5); id. at 113, 112 S.Ct. at 2390 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (rejecting the dissent's attempt to limit the scope of preemption to impossibility conflicts). 24 The State attempts to minimize the preemptive effect of OSHA standards by referring to Gade as a splintered decision. The Court's holding makes clear, however, that federal standards preempt even non-conflicting state laws. Although it is true that Gade was a plurality decision, in concurring, Justice Kennedy explicitly agreed with the persuasive holding of the four-Justice plurality that in the OSH statute Congress intended to pre-empt supplementary state regulation of an occupational safety and health issue with respect to which a federal standard exists. Id. Thus, a majority of the Court rejected the notion of concurrent state and federal jurisdiction in areas where [OSHA] issues a standard. Id. at 113-14, 112 S.Ct. at 2390-91. 25 The district court perceived the scope of preemption under Gade too narrowly. It held that the Occupational Safety and Health Act preempts only state regulations that impose requirements on employers and workers. Industrial Truck, 909 F.Supp. at 1376. It dismissed as dicta the Court's analysis of 29 U.S.C § 667(c)(2). Id. Section 667(c)(2) says nothing about employers and employees. It does, however, require OSHA to determine, prior to giving its approval of a state plan, whether: (1) the state standards in the plan are at least as effective as federal standards, and (2) the state standards, as applied to products, both do not unduly burden interstate commerce and are required by compelling local conditions. 29 U.S.C. § 667(c)(2). According to the plurality opinion, § 667(c)(2) demonstrates that any state regulations not submitted to OSHA as part of a state plan run afoul of the Occupational Safety and Health Act because OSHA has no opportunity to review them for fitness under this provision. Gade, 505 U.S. at 100-01, 112 S.Ct. at 2383-84. 26 We conclude that the plurality's analysis of § 667(c)(2) was not dicta, but rather an integral part of its decision. We agree that the best evidence of the existence of preemption comes from the text of 29 U.S.C. § 667(b). See Gade at 99, 112 S.Ct. at 2384; id. at 111, 112 S.Ct. at 2389 (Kennedy, J., concurring). As the plurality stated, its holding regarding the scope of Occupational Safety and Health Act preemption was dictated by its analysis of the statute as a whole, id. at 99, 102, 112 S.Ct. at 2383, 2384 and that analysis clearly included § 667(c)(2). Id. at 100-01, 112 S.Ct. at 2383-84. The district court essentially adopted the position of the Gade dissent, see Industrial Truck, 909 F.Supp. at 1376 n. 2 (citing dissent), and erred in doing so. 27 Although Gade involved regulations from Illinois, a state that had not submitted a state plan to OSHA, Gade, 505 U.S. at 93-95, 112 S.Ct. at 2380-81 the plurality's preemption analysis extends to states with approved plans like California. Gade refers to preemption of state regulation on an issue-by-issue basis. Id. at 100, 103-05, 112 S.Ct. at 2383, 2385-86. Indeed, the key preemption provision of the Occupational Safety and Health Act makes clear that when a state submits a state plan on a health and safety issue, the state takes responsibility only for the Federal standard on that issue, not all federal standards. See 29 U.S.C. § 667(b). Thus, by including some occupational safety issues in a state plan, a state is not freed from the preemptive grasp of federal standards for occupational safety issues not within the plan. 28 Further, a state may not submit some regulations on a worker safety issue to OSHA as part of its state plan and omit other regulations relating to the same issue from the plan. The omitted regulations, even if complementary to the Occupational Safety and Health Act's scheme, are subject to the background pre-emption of the federal standard. Gade, 505 U.S. at 100, 112 S.Ct. at 2383. As the plurality explained: 29 The OSH Act does not foreclose a State from enacting its own laws to advance the goal of worker safety, but it does restrict the ways in which it can do so. If a State wishes to regulate an issue of worker safety for which a federal standard is in effect, its only option is to obtain the prior approval of the Secretary of Labor, as described in [29 U.S.C. § 667]. 30 Id. at 103-04, 112 S.Ct. at 2385-86 (footnote omitted). It would make the state plan approval requirement superfluous if a state could pick and choose which occupational health and safety regulations to submit to OSHA. Thus, under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, as interpreted by Gade, when OSHA promulgates a federal standard, that standard totally occupies the field within the issue of that regulation and preempts all state occupational safety and health laws relating to that issue, conflicting or not, unless they are included in the state plan. 31