Court Opinion

ID: 9428890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:04.35215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.935434
License: Public Domain

Justice O’Connor,
concurring.
I join in the Court’s opinion but write separately to emphasize that the authority of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to pre-empt state laws is not limitless.* Although Congress delegated broad power to the Board to ensure that federally chartered savings and loan institutions “would re*172main financially sound,” ante, at 168, it is clear that HOLA does not permit the Board to pre-empt the application of all state and local laws to such institutions. Nothing in the language of § 5(a) of HOLA, which empowers the Board to “provide for the organization, incorporation, examination, operation, and regulation” of federally chartered savings and loans, remotely suggests that Congress intended to permit the Board to displace local laws, such as tax statutes and zoning ordinances, not directly related to savings and loan practices. Accordingly, in my view, nothing in the Court’s opinion should be read to the contrary.

 At one point in today’s opinion, the Court states that “we need not decide whether the HOLA or the Board’s regulations occupy . . . the entire field of federal savings and loan regulation.” Ante, at 159, n. 14.