Opinion ID: 795247
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Disposition of the Appeal

Text: 66 A complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief. Todd v. Exxon Corp., 275 F.3d 191, 197-98 (2d Cir.2001) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because we are confined to the allegations contained in Drake's complaint, the precise contours of [his] theory of recovery have not yet been defined. Lohr, 518 U.S. at 495, 116 S.Ct. 2240. For those claims for which preemption cannot be easily determined from the pleadings, Abdu-Brisson v. Delta Airlines, Inc., 128 F.3d 77, 84 (2d Cir. 1997), our standard of review requires us to affirm the district court's decision to deny the defendants-appellants' motion to dismiss, with the understanding that the claims may ultimately prove to be preempted at a later stage of the litigation. 67 At present, none of Drake's five surviving state-law causes of action—negligence, tortious interference with economic relations, misrepresentation, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy—appears to be foreclosed in its entirety. Each claim is based at least in part on the defendants-appellants' alleged violation of federal drug-testing regulations. As we have explained, state law may provide remedies for violations of federal standards so long as it does not impose substantive standards of its own in areas addressed by the federal regulations. On the other hand, certain subsidiary claims in Drake's complaint are incompatible with federal law to the extent that they seek to supplement the federal requirements with substantive state-law standards applicable to the same issue. And they are preempted insofar as they rely on state common-law procedures and protocols for drug testing. 68 Because, construing Drake's complaint liberally, none of his asserted state-law causes of action are based solely on preempted state law, the district court did not err in refusing to dismiss them at this time. On remand, however, and as the litigation proceeds, Drake will continue to be precluded from developing theories of recovery that are incompatible with the FAA's drug-testing program.