Court Opinion

ID: 9431314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:57.264622+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:27.940949
License: Public Domain

Justice White,
with whom Justice O’Connor joins, dissenting.
The Court’s seminal decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), establishes the principle that the *187States may not exercise their sovereign powers so as to control those instrumentalities of the United States which have been judged necessary and proper to carry into effect federal laws and policies. Although the narrow issue in that case involved only the assertion by the State of Maryland of its power to tax a federal bank, the Court laid down a more general construction of the Supremacy Clause that has proved to be enduring in its force of reason. As the Court stated: “The attempt to use [state sovereign power] on the means employed by the government of the Union, in pursuance of the constitution, is itself an abuse, because it is the usurpation of a power which the people of a single State cannot give.” Id., at 430. The contrary principle would be “capable of arresting all the measures of the government, and of prostrating it at the foot of the States. The American people have declared their constitution, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, to be supreme; but this principle would transfer the supremacy, in fact, to the States.” Id., at 432. “The result,” the Court concluded, “is a conviction that the States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the general government.” Id., at 436 (emphasis added).
Although, again, the narrow issue in McCulloch concerned only the power to tax, which as the Court noted “involves the power to destroy,” id., at 431, the passages quoted above demonstrate that the decision was formulated, explicitly, with sufficient breadth to apply to other measures a State might impose that would “retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control” the operations of federal instrumentalities. Id., at 436. And, clearly, the power to regulate also involves “the power to destroy” if the regulatory web is spun too tightly around its object. More commonly, however, the additional and perhaps conflicting regulations imposed by a *188State would simply burden the federal instrumentality, interfere with its operations, and frustrate the federal objectives it is designed to achieve. Nonetheless, the law has long been settled that such regulation cannot be imposed on federal instrumentalities by the States, under the Supremacy Clause, unless the Federal Government directly indicates that it finds such impositions to be consistent with the proper pursuit of its powers under federal law. Hancock v. Train, 426 U. S. 167, 178-179 (1976); Mayo v. United States, 319 U. S. 441, 447-448 (1943).
In this case the State of Ohio seeks to require a federal nuclear facility, which all concede to be the equivalent of any other federal instrumentality,1 to make a “bonus” money payment to workers who are injured when the injury results from the facility’s failure to comply with “any specific [state] requirement for the protection of the lives, health or safety of employees.” Ohio Const., Ait. II, §35. Although the Court declines to decide whether this provision of state law is tantamount to a regulation of the facility or to some similarly impermissible imposition upon it, ante, at 182, I believe that no other view is tenable on the facts before us.
Initially, the proper focus under the Supremacy Clause is not the avowed purpose for which the State adopts a given provision but the actual effect of the provision on the operation of a federal instrumentality and on its ability to achieve the objectives of federal law and policy for which it has been created. Perez v. Campbell, 402 U. S. 637, 651-652 (1971). The Court has held that even the general framework of state workers’ compensation laws may not be applied at places that lie within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government. Murray v. Gerrick & Co., 291 U. S. 315 (1934). And *189yet the provision of Ohio law at issue in this case is much more specific in its application, and in its regulatory effect upon this federal facility, than is the general framework of such laws. The basic feature of the state statutory regimes for the compensation of workers is that the common law governing the relationship between employer and employee, whose doctrines had become so disadvantageous to employees, is replaced by an automatic entitlement of the employee to certain benefits when injured in the course of employment. See 1 A. Larson, Law of Workmen’s Compensation §§1.10-3.40 (1985). Unlike this basic scheme, however, which does not pressure the federal facility to alter its operations in any specific respect to comply with particular state regulations, the Ohio law exposes the facility to a special penalty if it does not comply with “any specific [state] requirement for the protection of the lives, health or safety of employees.” Ohio Const., Art. II, §35. The specificity of these requirements is much more intrusive on the management of the federal facility than even a state workers’ compensation law that would preserve the employee’s right to sue the employer for willful misconduct or for intentional injury, as do the laws of several States. In terms of the regulatory impact on the federal instrumentality, it is one thing for the facility to know that it should manage its operations so as to minimize the risk of injuries to its employees; it is quite another to expose it to money penalties for failing to comply with the whole panoply of specific state regulations that dictate precise rules to govern very detailed aspects of employee health and safety.
It is quite obvious that an attempt by the State of Ohio to impose these same kinds of specific regulations on the federal facility, directly, by obliging the facility to satisfy them all or else to suspend operations, would run afoul of the Supremacy Clause. The rule at issue here has a similar effect. Appel-lees claim that the federal facility violated a provision in the code of safety requirements, which the State of Ohio has *190adopted by administrative rule. The provision sets out specific restrictions on mobile work platforms and rolling platforms, and says that “[ejxposed surfaces shall be free from sharp edges, burrs or other projecting parts.” Ohio Admin. Code §4121:1-5-03(D)(2) (1987). There are thousands of such requirements in the administrative rules adopted by the Ohio Industrial Commission’s Division of Safety and Hygiene, which in their current version run to well over 200 double-columned pages of meticulous prescriptions, illustrated in minute detail with diagrams, graphs, and charts, see Ohio Admin. Code, ch. 4121:1 (1987), and there are countless other specific requirements in the State’s other laws and regulations. It will not do to say that the State of Ohio has not attempted to regulate this facility directly, but simply has exposed it to possible money payments for failure to comply with these specific requirements, since such requirements are often enforced by fines rather than by enjoining specific conduct, and in any event the apparent means of enforcing all of these rules is through the workers’ compensation awards permitted under state law.
Nor does it make sense to say that the State of Ohio is not fining the facility, but is only penalizing it in the form of additional compensation to injured workers. It cannot matter that the extra payment is made only in the event of an actual injury; one might just as well argue that a regulatory fine would not be a burden if it were imposed not every day but only on the less frequent occasions when inspections are held. Even more to the point, if the amount of the money penalty were very large, the direct compulsion that would be brought to bear upon the federal facility to knuckle under and scrutinize its operations for compliance with every jot and tittle of the state administrative rules is apparent. The case is no different because the amount of the extra “bonus” award in any given instance may be small. In Ohio v. Thomas, 173 U. S. 276 (1899), the contested provision involved nothing *191more than whether the person in charge of an eating house at a federal home for disabled veterans was required under state law to put out a small printed sign that would read “oleomargarine sold and used here” when he served oleomargarine to the inmates. The state law was found to be invalid as applied to the federal facility, under the Supremacy Clause, without regard to the plain fact that the contested imposition was such a slight one, for the principle remains the same in such a case.2
The mechanics of the Ohio provision, as interpreted by the Ohio courts, reinforce both the obvious regulatory effect of this state law and the important differences between such a provision and a basic workers’ compensation scheme. First, unlike workers’ compensation, which provides an award to every employee who is injured on the job regardless of how the injury occurred, the additional payment here is only available when the facility fails to comply with a state regulatory “requirement.” Even the regulatory provisions embodied in federal laws and rules have been held not to activate the extra money penalty afforded by state law. See, e. g., State ex rel. Ish v. Industrial Comm’n, 19 Ohio St. 3d 28, 482 N. E. 2d 941 (1985); State ex rel. Roberts v. Industrial Comm’n, 10 Ohio St. 3d 1, 460 N. E. 2d 251 (1984). Second, the necessity that the state requirement be “specific” in its dictates has been strictly construed. It “does not comprehend a general course of conduct or general duties or obligations flowing from the relation of employer and employee, but embraces such lawful, specific and definite requirements or standards of conduct as are prescribed by statute or by orders of the Industrial Commission.” State ex rel. Trydle v. Industrial Comm’n, 32 Ohio St. 2d 257, 291 N. E. 2d 748, *192750 (1972). The question whether a particular safety requirement is sufficiently “specific” to support an extra money penalty has often been litigated in the Ohio courts, and such awards are invalidated unless the claimant is able to demonstrate that the specific requirement “demands that some particular and definite act or thing be done.” State ex rel. Holdosh v. Industrial Comm’n, 149 Ohio St. 179, 181-182, 78 N. E. 2d 165, 166 (1948). See also State ex rel. Rae v. Industrial Comm’n, 136 Ohio St. 168, 24 N. E. 2d 594 (1939); Trydle, supra; State ex rel. Jack Conie & Sons Corp. v. Industrial Comm’n, 56 Ohio St. 2d 150, 382 N. E. 2d 1366 (1978). In order to secure the penalty award, the employee must show that the regulatory requirement is “definite” in the sense that it leaves no discretion to the employer — does not make it at all “a matter of his own choosing” — how to comply with the specific requirement. State ex rel. Fast & Co. v. Industrial Comm’n, 176 Ohio St. 199, 201, 198 N. E. 2d 666, 667 (1964).
Since this provision of Ohio law exacts a monetary penalty only for failure to comply with state laws and regulations, and indeed only for failure to comply with those state regulations which are so specific that they dictate precisely what steps the employer must take to avoid this increased financial exposure, the principal effect of this provision can only be to induce the employer to adhere to each of the various health and safety regulations that the State has adopted. And therefore the impact of such a provision on a federal instrumentality presents a very different problem, for purposes of analysis under the Supremacy Clause, from that posed by the mere application of a state workers’ compensation scheme.
The Court today skirts these difficulties and rests its disposition on the view that, no matter how extensive the actual regulatory effect of this state law may be, Congress has sanctioned its application to federal instrumentalities by enacting 40 U. S. C. § 290. The Court finds in this statute the “unam*193biguous” and “clear congressional mandate” approving such state regulation that we have required in past cases. Kern-Limerick, Inc. v. Scurlock, 347 U. S. 110, 122 (1954); EPA v. State Water Resources Control Board, 426 U. S. 200, 211 (1976). I disagree.
Section 290 authorizes each State to apply its “workmen’s compensation laws” to all “property belonging to the United States of America, which is within the exterior boundaries of any State, in the same way and to the same extent as if said premises were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the State.” The crux of the matter is whether Congress intended by this provision to open up all federal instrumentalities to the kind of potentially onerous regulation of their operations that is imposed by the Ohio provision for money penalties. I do not believe that in authorizing the States to apply these compensation laws to federal instrumentalities “in the same way and to the same extent” as they apply to other employers, Congress had any purpose to expose federal establishments to coercive financial pressure to comply with a slew of detailed state regulations about how to carry on their operations. Nothing in the statute or its background suggests that Congress had such an intent, and certainly nothing at all suggests that any such position was “clearly” or “unambiguously” approved by Congress. I am unimpressed by the fact that a small fraction of the States permitted such additional awards at the time § 290 was passed; if the “clear congressional mandate” approving such state regulations cannot be found in the federal statute itself, then the obscure practices of a few States at the time of enactment will not suffice to create one. Congress need not explicitly disapprove every contrary aspect of the workers’ compensation laws of the several States in order to refrain from giving them its “unambiguous” blessing.
Section 290 was enacted in response to the Court’s decision in Murray v. Gerrick & Co., 291 U. S. 315 (1934), which had held that state workers’ compensation laws may not be ap*194plied at all in areas under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government. The purpose of the bill as stated was simply the humanitarian one of “correcting this situation,” in which workers employed on federal projects were deprived of the benefits of coverage purely because of an oddity of location. S. Rep. No. 2294, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1936); H. R. Rep. No. 2656, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 1 (1936). As the Senate Report explained at greater length: “The purpose of the amended bill is to fill a conspicuous gap in the workmen’s compensation field by furnishing protection against death or disability to laborers and mechanics employed by contractors or other persons on Federal property.” S. Rep. No. 2294, at 1.
That Congress intended nothing more than to provide much-needed coverage to these workers is shown by the single revealing item in the scanty legislative history of the statute. The House version of the bill not only would have extended coverage to these workers, but also would have subjected federal property to state safety and insurance regulations and would have authorized state officers to enter upon federal premises in furtherance of these aims. The Senate struck out these latter provisions at the request of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, noting expressly that they “would not only produce conflicts of authority between State and Federal officers but would also mark a wide departure from the well-established principle that Federal officers should have complete charge of any regulations pertaining to Federal property.” S. Rep. No. 2294, at 2. As no such departure from normal practice was intended by Congress, the Senate version of the bill was enacted.
This background to the enactment of § 290 shows that Congress did not intend to expose federal instrumentalities to the kind of detailed and mandatory regulation that is provided by the Ohio law at issue in this ease. The Court’s response on this point is simply to assert that “[t]he effects of direct regulation on the operation of federal projects are significantly *195more intrusive than the incidental regulatory effects of such an additional award provision.” Ante, at 185. In some instances the Court may be correct that the effects of direct regulation could be more intrusive than a provision for penalty awards, but the question here is not whether these two things are exactly the same, but simply whether the “regulatory effects” of the penalty provision, which as set out above are far from “incidental,” are the kinds of effects that Congress did not intend to sanction when it enacted §290. These effects are clearly impermissible under the rationale that the Senate articulated for removing from the bill the two obnoxious provisions that had been included in the House version. And even if I were to conclude that Congress had acted ambiguously on this score, I would at least be forced to conclude that Congress offered no “clear” or “unambiguous” mandate for the kind of specific regulatory compulsion that this Ohio law exerts upon this federal facility.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

 The Court recognizes, ante, at 180-181, and I agree, that under our precedents the facility here, which is federally owned but is operated by a private party under contract with the Federal Government, must be treated as a federal instrumentality for the purpose of applying the Supremacy Clause. Hancock v. Train, 426 U. S. 167, 174, n. 23 (1976).

 If this point is thought to matter, however, it is worth noting that Ohio’s penalty scheme allows for larger money payments than does any other State. 2A A. Larson, Law of Workmen’s Compensation §69.10 (1987). The penalty award at issue in this case would amount to somewhere between $1,328 and $4,429. Brief for Appellee Miller 3, n. 4.