Amicus Curiae Brief — Shawn Montgomery, Petitioner v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, et al.

Supreme Court briefDec 8, 2025

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No. 24-1238

In the

Supreme Court of the United States

SHAWN MONTGOMERY,

Petitioner,

CARIBE TRANSPORT II, LLC, et al.,

Respondents.

On Writ of Certiorari to the United States

Court of A ppeals for the Seventh Circuit

BRIEF OF PREEMPTION

SCHOLARS AS AMICI CURIAE

IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER

Michael Cowen

Cowen Rodriguez

Peacock, P.C.

6243 I-10 West, Suite 801

San Antonio, TX 78201

Ernest A. Young

Counsel of Record

3208 Fox Terrace Drive

Apex, NC 27502

(919) 360-7718

young@law.duke.edu

Counsel for Amici Curiae

December 8, 2025

120780

(800) 274-3321 • (800) 359-6859

QUESTION PRESENTED

Whether the Federal Aviation Administration

Authorization Act of 1994’s preemption clause, 49 U.S.C.

§14501(c), preempts a state common-law claim against a

broker for negligently selecting a motor carrier or driver.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

QUESTION PRESENTED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

INTEREST OF AMICI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Seventh Circuit Over-Read the Scope

of Federal Preemption Under the FAAAA . . . . 4

A. This Court’s preemption jurisprudence

has carefully confined the scope of

federal displacement of state law, even

in field preemption cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

B. St at e broker negl igence cla i ms

fall outside the preemptive scope

of the FAAAA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

II. General Principles of Preemption Doctrine

Support a Narrower Reading of the FAAAA’s

Preemptive Scope than the Seventh Circuit

Offered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

iii

Table of Contents

Page

A. This Court’s preemption cases have

looked to statutory purposes to narrow

the scope of ambiguous language . . . . . . . . 17

B. This Court’s traditional presumption

against preemption is not inconsistent

with a focus on statutory text . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The Rice presumption informs

statutory meaning by providing

important context, rather than

asking courts to set aside the more

plausible readings of statutes . . . . . . . 21

2. To the extent that Rice functions

as a substantive canon, it is wellgrounded in the Constitution and

historical practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES

Page

Cases

Alonzo v. Menholt,

9 N.W.3d 148 (Minn. 2024) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Arizona v. United States,

567 U.S. 387 (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Aspen American Ins. Co. v. Landstar Ranger, Inc.,

65 F.4th 1261 (11th Cir. 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 11

Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon,

473 U.S. 234 (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Basic Energy Services, L.P. v.

Petroleum Resource Mgt. Corp.,

343 P.3d 783 (Wyo. 2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC,

544 U.S. 431 (2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Biden v. Nebraska,

600 U.S. 477 (2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17, 21, 23, 24, 26

Branch v. Smith,

538 U.S. 254 (2003) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Cal. Div. of Labor Standards Enf’t v.

Dillingham Constr., N.A., Inc.,

519 U.S. 316 (1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Cited Authorities

Page

California Coastal Comm’n v. Granite Rock Co.,

480 U.S. 572 (1987) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting,

563 U.S. 582 (2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 9, 10, 11

Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey,

569 U.S. 265 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 12, 14, 15, 19

FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.,

529 U.S. 120 (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Geier v. American Honda Motor Co.,

529 U.S. 861 (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Hines v. Davidowitz,

312 U.S. 52 (1941) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Huron Portland Cement Co. v. City of Detroit,

362 U.S. 440 (1960) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr,

518 U.S. 470 (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 20

Morales v. Trans World Airlines, Inc.,

504 U.S. 374 (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 10, 13, 14

N.Y. State Conf. of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans

v. Travelers Ins. Co.,

514 U.S. 645 (1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 19

Cited Authorities

Page

Nationwide Freight Sys., Inc. v.

Illinois Com. Comm’n,

784 F.3d 367 (7th Cir. 2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Oneok, Inc. v. Learjet, Inc.,

575 U.S. 373 (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 13

Pacific Gas and Electric Company v.

State Energy Resources Conservation

& Development Commission,

461 U.S. 190 (1983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 8, 9, 14

Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp.,

331 U.S. 218 (1947) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 20-25, 27, 28

Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transport Ass’n,

552 U.S. 364 (2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 11, 16, 18

Ruh v. Metal Recycling Services, LLC,

889 S.E.2d 577 (S.C. 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Savage v. Jones,

225 U.S. 501 (1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp.,

464 U.S. 238 (1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Southland Corp. v. Keating,

465 U.S. 1 (1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

vii

Cited Authorities

Page

United States v. Locke,

529 U.S. 89 (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren,

587 U.S. 761 (2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 17

Western Stock Ctr., Inc. v. Sevit, Inc.,

578 P.2d 1045 (Colo. 1978) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Wooden v. United States,

595 U.S. 360 (2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Wyeth v. Levine,

555 U.S. 555 (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 19, 20

Ye v. GlobalTranz Enters., Inc.,

74 F.4th 453 (7th Cir. 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5, 10, 11

Statutes and Rules

49 U.S.C. § 14501(c) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 5, 10, 12, 17

49 U.S.C. § 140501(c)(2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Americans With Disabilities Act . . . . . . . 6, 10, 13, 15, 16

Employee Retirement Income Security Act . . . . . . 18, 19

viii

Cited Authorities

Page

Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act

of 1994 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-6, 10-12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 24

Immigration Reform and Control Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Supreme Court Rule 37.6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Other Authorities

8 A.L.R.2d 267 § 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

A my Coney Ba r rett , Substantive Canons

and Faithful Agency, 90 B.U. L. R ev. 109

(2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21, 22, 26, 27, 29

Michael Barsa & Dav id Dana, The Major

Q u e s ti o n s D o c t r i n e’s Up s i d e fo r

Combatting Climate Change, 32 N.Y.U.

Env. L. J. 1 (2024) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Paul B ator , Paul M ishk in , Dav id S h a piro ,

& H e rb e r t W e c h s l e r , H a r t a n d

Wechsler’s T he F ederal C ourts and the

Federal System (2d ed. 1973) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

William Baude, Jack Goldsmith, John F. Manning,

Ja mes E. P fa nder , & A m a nda L. T y ler ,

H art and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts

and the Federal System (8th ed. 2025) . . . . . . . . . . 3

Cited Authorities

Page

Bradford R. Clark, Separation of Powers as

a Safeguard of Federalism, 79 T e x . L.

Rev. 1321 (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Cong ressional Research Ser v ice, Federal

Preemption: A Legal Pr imer (updated

May 18, 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 18

Viet Dinh, Reassessing the Law of Preemption,

88 Geo. L. J. 2085 (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Philip P. Frickey, Getting from Joe to Gene

(McCarthy): The Avoidance Canon, Legal

Process Theory, and Narrowing Statutory

Interpretation in the Early Warren Court,

93 Calif. L. Rev. 397 (2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Stephen Gardbaum, The Nature of Preemption,

79 Cornell L. Rev. 767 (1994) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

John F. Manning, Legal Realism and the

Canons’ Revival, 5 Green Bag 2d 283 . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Daniel J. Meltzer, Preemption and Textualism,

112 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17, 18

Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 (1965) . . . . . . . . . 13

David L. Shapiro, Continuity and Change

in Statutory Interpretation, 67 N.Y.U. L.

Rev. 921 (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Cited Authorities

Page

Ernest A. Young, Constitutional Avoidance,

Resistance Norms, and the Preservation of

Judicial Review, 78 Tex. L. Rev. 1549 (2000) . . . . . 27

Ernest A. Young, The Continuity of Statutory

and Constitutional Inter pretation: An

Essay for Phil Frickey, 98 Calif. L. R ev.

1371 (2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Ernest A. Young, “The Ordinary Diet of the Law”:

The Presumption Against Preemption in the

Roberts Court, 2011 Sup. Ct. Rev. 253 . . . 9, 20, 23, 26-28

Ernest A. Young, Two Cheers for Process Federalism,

46 Vill. L. Rev. 1349 (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

INTEREST OF AMICI

Amici are law professors interested in federal

preemption of state law.1 Our interest arises from teaching

and writing in a variety of related fields, including

administrative law, constitutional law, environmental

law, health law, and torts. William Buzbee is the Edward

and Carole Walter Professor at Georgetown University

Law Center. Daniel Farber is the Sho Sato Professor

at the University of California, Berkeley School of

Law. Daniel Lyons is Professor and Associate Dean of

Academic Affairs at Boston College Law School. Thomas

McGarity holds the William Powers, Jr. and Kim Heilbrun

Chair in Administrative Law at the University of Texas

School of Law. Paul McGreal is the James Koley ’54

Professor of Constitutional Law at Creighton University

School of Law. David Rubenstein is a Professor of Law

at Washburn University School of Law. Wendy Wagner

holds the Richard Dale Chair in Law at the University of

Texas School of Law. Ernest Young is the Alston & Bird

Distinguished Professor at Duke Law School.

Each of us believes that legal scholarship should be

concerned with and made useful to the decision of issues

presently before the courts. We join this brief solely in

our individual capacities as lawyers and scholars, and

the views expressed here should not be attributed to our

institutions.

1. Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 37.6, counsel for amici

represent that they authored this brief in its entirety and that none

of the parties or their counsel, nor any other person or entity other

than amici or their counsel, made a monetary contribution intended

to fund the preparation or submission of this brief.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

This Court has read federal statutes displacing

state law to do so for particular purposes and within

a limited scope. The Federal Aviation Administration

Authorization Act of 1994 (“FA A A A”) was one of a

series of federal statutes that deregulated aspects of the

various transportation industries, beginning with the

airlines and later extending to the trucking industry.

Those statutes did not, of course, eliminate all regulation

of these industries; they sought to establish free and

competitive markets for transportation services, but left

intact state authority to regulate unsafe practices and

prevent accidents. Several lower courts, however, have

read that statute to preempt any state measures that have

a “significant economic impact” on the trucking industry.

That approach is inconsistent with this Court’s precedents,

which have read the FAAAA’s preemptive force as limited

by its concern with anti-competitive regulation. The lower

courts’ reading also contradicts more general principles

of preemption jurisprudence, which counsel courts to

carefully define the limits of a statute’s preemptive scope.

A s schola rs of both statutor y inter pretation

and federalism, amici aim to situate the FA A A A’s

limited preemptive force within the broader context

of interpretive theory and federalism doctrine. The

key point is that Congress typically legislates against

a background of state law that it may wish to modify

but rarely intends to disrupt or displace altogether. As

Professors Henry Hart and Herbert Wechsler explained

many years ago, “[f]ederal law is generally interstitial

in its nature. It rarely occupies a legal field completely,

totally excluding all participation by the legal systems of

the states.” 2 Rather, “[f]ederal legislation, on the whole,

has been conceived and drafted on an ad hoc basis to

accomplish limited objectives. . . . Congress acts, in

short, against the background of the total corpus juris

of the states in much the way that a state legislature

acts against the backg round of the common law,

assumed to govern unless changed by legislation.” 3 This

understanding of federalism provides vital context for

reading the textual provisions of federal statutes, and it

grounds this Court’s “presumption against preemption”

when construing laws of ambiguous preemptive scope.4

These principles confirm what the FAAAA’s text

indicates: That Congress meant to remove regulatory

impediments to competitive markets for trucking services,

but not to upend the states’ ability to regulate unsafe

practices that result in deadly accidents.

ARGUMENT

The FA A A A contains both a preemption clause

(§ 14501(c)(1)) and a “safety exception” (§ 14501(c)(2)). Amici

2. William Baude, Jack Goldsmith, John F. M anning, James

E. P fander , & A manda L. T yler , H art and Wechsler’s T he

Federal Courts and the Federal System 649-50 (8th ed. 2025)

(quoting the first edition of 1953).

3. Id.

4. See, e.g., Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 230

(1947); see also Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555, 565 (2009) (stating

that the “two cornerstones of our pre-emption jurisprudence” are

(1) “‘the purpose of Congress is the ultimate touchstone,’” and (2)

the presumption “‘that the historic police powers of the States

were not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the

clear and manifest purpose of Congress.’”) (quoting Medtronic,

Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470, 485 (1996)).

agree with Petitioners that this case may be properly

resolved either by holding that state-law negligence claims

against freight brokers fall within the safety exception or

by holding that such claims fall outside the scope of the

preemption clause. This brief focuses on the latter, because

the lower courts have read that clause to effectively

mandate field preemption of anything that “directly

effects” the trucking industry. That reading threatens

not only safety regulation but other generally applicable

requirements—anti-discrimination laws, for example,

or wage and hour legislation. This reading runs counter

to longstanding principles of preemption jurisprudence,

which are also reflected in this Court’s prior constructions

of the FAAAA.

Rather than deflecting attention from the statutory

text, these general principles place that text in context.

They recognize that Congress legislates against a

background of state law, and federal statutes generally

seek to alter that background in targeted ways rather

than displacing broad swaths of it. To the extent that the

Court finds the text legitimately ambiguous, however, the

same general principles—embodied in the longstanding

presumption against preemption—counsel that the

text’s meaning should be informed by the constitutional

importance of maintaining the States’ vital role in our

federalist structure.

The Seventh Circuit Over-Read the Scope of Federal

Preemption Under the FAAAA.

This case, as Judge Scudder properly noted, “concerns

express preemption.” Ye v. GlobalTranz Enters., Inc.,

74 F.4th 453, 457 (7th Cir. 2023). Yet the lower courts’

interpretation of the FAAAA’s preemption clause, in

practice, looks a lot like field preemption. From this

Court’s statement that § 14501(c)(1)’s reference to state

laws “related to” transportation services had a “broad

preemptive purpose,” Morales v. Trans World Airlines,

Inc., 504 U.S. 374, 383 (1992) (construing the Airline

Deregulation Act), the Seventh Circuit concluded that

“the state law in question need only have a ‘connection

with, or reference to’ these services.” 74 F.4th at 458.

Even a connection that is “only indirect” suffices; state

law is preempted if it “relates to broker ‘rates, routes,

or services either by expressly referring to them, or by

having a significant economic effect on them.’” Id. (quoting

Nationwide Freight Sys., Inc. v. Illinois Com. Comm’n,

784 F.3d 367, 373-74 (7th Cir. 2015)). It was enough that

the threat of broker liability might “change how they

conduct their services—for instance, by incurring new

costs to evaluate motor carriers.” Id. at 459. 5 It is difficult

to imagine any form of state regulation applicable to

the trucking industry that could not have a “significant

economic impact” on the participants in that industry. The

court of appeals’ standard is inconsistent with the way

this Court has analyzed the preemptive scope of federal

statutes, even when those statutes preempt an entire field

of regulation.

5. See also Aspen American Ins. Co. v. Landstar Ranger,

Inc., 65 F.4th 1261, 1267-68 (11th Cir. 2023) (holding that any

regulation of a broker’s conduct falls within § 14501(c)(1)’s scope).

This Cour t’s preemption jurisprudence

has carefully confined the scope of federal

displacement of state law, even in field

preemption cases.

The court of appeals’s exceptionally broad reading of

“relating to” is inconsistent both with general principles

of preemption jurisprudence and with this Court’s

caselaw under the FAAAA and the ADA. As Justice

Stevens once observed, “even where a federal statute

does displace State authority, it ‘rarely occupies a legal

field completely, totally excluding all participation by

the legal systems of the states. . . . Federal legislation,

on the whole, has been conceived and drafted on an ad

hoc basis to accomplish limited objectives. It builds upon

legal relationships established by the states, altering

or supplanting them only so far as necessary for the

special purpose.’” Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U.S.

1, 18 (1984) (Stevens, J., concurring in part) (quoting

Paul Bator, Paul Mishkin, David Shapiro, & Herbert

Wechsler, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts

and the Federal System 470-471 (2d ed. 1973)).6 This

Court has thus carefully traced the boundaries of federal

statutes’ preemptive scope, even in areas where Congress

6. See also Huron Portland Cement Co. v. City of Detroit, 362

U.S. 440, 443 (1960) (“In determining whether state regulation has

been pre-empted by federal action, ‘the intent to supersede the

exercise by the state of its police power as to matters not covered

by the Federal legislation is not to be inferred from the mere

fact that Congress has seen fit to circumscribe its regulation and

to occupy a limited field. In other words, such intent is not to be

implied unless the act of Congress, fairly interpreted, is in actual

conflict with the law of the state.’”) (quoting Savage v. Jones, 225

U.S. 501, 533 (1912)).

has preempted a particular field of regulation, insisting

that “we must proceed cautiously, finding pre-emption

only where detailed examination convinces us that a

matter falls within the pre-empted field as defined by our

precedents.” Oneok, Inc. v. Learjet, Inc., 575 U.S. 373,

385 (2015).7

T wo of this Court’s leading preemption cases

illustrate the point. In Pacific Gas and Electric Company

v. State Energy Resources Conservation & Development

Commission, 461 U.S. 190 (1983), this Court considered

preemption under the Atomic Energy Act. The AEA not

only extensively regulated “radiological safety,” but it also

ended the federal monopoly over “control and ownership

of nuclear technology,” choosing to “encourag[e] the

private sector to become involved in the development of

atomic energy for peaceful purposes under a program

of federal regulation and licensing.” Id. at 205-07. These

fields were preempted; “[u]pon these subjects, no role

was left for the states.” Id. a 207. But the Court rejected

the argument that the Act was “intended to preserve the

federal government as the sole regulator of all matters

nuclear.” Id. at 205. It recognized that, despite the federal

licensing scheme, Congress had not disturbed the States’

traditional authority to assess “[n]eed for new power

facilities [and] their economic feasability,” or to regulate

“rates and services.” Id. at 205. In the absence of federal

provisions regulating “the economic question whether

7. See, e.g., Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, 587 U.S.

761 (2019) (ruling out field preemption even in cases where state

regulation was motivated by purpose to achieve ends reserved to

the federal government); Oneok, 575 U.S. at 388 (finding that the

Natural Gas Act did not preempt state antitrust claims involving

manipulation of both wholesale and retail gas prices).

a particular plant should be built,” the Court found it

“almost inconceivable that Congress would have left a

regulatory vacuum,” concluding that “Congress intended

the states to continue to make these judgments.” Id. at

208. 8

Likewise, the Court in Chamber of Commerce

v. Whiting, 563 U.S. 582 (2011), confronted a setting

involving powerful arguments for field preemption. This

Court had previously described legislation concerning

immigration and the rights of aliens to be “the one aspect

of our government that from the first has been most

generally conceded imperatively to demand broad national

authority,” such that “[a]ny concurrent state power that

may exist is restricted to the narrowest of limits.” Hines v.

Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 67-68 (1941).9 Whiting involved an

Arizona statute allowing state courts to suspend or revoke

a company’s license to do business in the state if it employs

an unauthorized alien. This Court rejected arguments that

the state law was expressly or impliedly preempted under

the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA),

which extensively regulates employment of unauthorized

aliens. The Chamber and the dissenters argued that the

Arizona law was too broad to fit into a statutory savings

8. See also California Coastal Comm’n v. Granite Rock

Co., 480 U.S. 572, 581-89 (1987) (refusing to hold that federal

preemption of state land use laws with respect to lands in a national

forest foreclosed state environmental regulations that did not

directly conflict with federal regulation).

9. See also Viet Dinh, Reassessing the Law of Preemption, 88

Geo. L. J. 2085, 2099 (2000) (“Hines may be better understood as

a field preemption case because the opinion relied on the uniquely

national nature of regulating aliens to hold that state laws on the

same subject are displaced.”).

clause for state “licensing and similar laws,” and that in

any event it was impliedly preempted because it “upsets

the balance that Congress sought to strike” between

“deterring unauthorized alien employment, avoiding

burdens on employers, protecting employee privacy, and

guarding against employment discrimination.” 563 U.S.

at 596-99, 603-04. But the Court interpreted the savings

clause broadly, id. at 594-96, and it insisted that “[o]ur

precedents ‘establish that a high threshold must be met

if a state law is to be preempted for conflicting with the

purposes of a federal Act.” Id. at 607.

The critical point about Whiting is simply that,

as in Pacific Gas, this Court understood the scope of

preemption to be limited even in a field involving very

strong federal interests. 10 It did this both through

generous construction of textual exceptions to preemption

and precise delimitation of the scope of Congress’s

purposes. And the Court understood that one of those

purposes is generally the preservation of traditional

forms of state regulation that may bear incidentally on

matters of federal concern. See 563 U.S. at 606-07. To hold

otherwise would impose a massive burden on Congress

to anticipate all the myriad sorts of state regulation that

might incidentally impact deregulated industries and

provide for them through specific statutory provisions.

That is an unrealistic burden for Congress to meet, and

this Court has almost never imposed anything like it.

10. See also Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 401

(2012) (defining the scope of field preemption in immigration as

limited to “the field of alien registration”); Ernest A. Young, “The

Ordinary Diet of the Law”: The Presumption Against Preemption

in the Roberts Court, 2011 Sup. Ct. Rev. 253, 298-302 (discussing

Whiting).

This Court has been far more sensitive to the statelaw background in its jurisprudence under the ADA and

the FAAAA. In Rowe, the Court framed its preemption

test as not simply whether a state law has a “significant

impact” on the trucking business, but rather whether

“state laws have a ‘significant impact’ related to Congress’s

deregulatory and pre-emption-related objectives.” 552

U.S. at 371 (emphasis added). This Court explained

that “Congress’ overarching goal [was] helping ensure

transportation rates, routes, and services that reflect

‘maximum reliance on competitive market forces,’ thereby

stimulating ‘efficiency, innovation, and low prices,’ as

well as ‘variety’ and ‘quality.’” Id. (quoting Morales, 504

U.S. at 378). Dan’s City provided an example. Although

“Section 14501(c) does not exempt zoning regulations,” the

Court thought that “[i]t is hardly doubtful that state or

local regulation of the physical location of motor-carrier

operations falls outside the preemptive sweep of § 14501(c)

(1).” 569 U.S. at 264. Zoning surely does have a significant

economic impact on participants in the trucking business,

and such laws may require them to alter their operations

by relocating their facilities. But zoning laws obviously

have little relation to the pro-competitive goals of the

federal regime. They thus do not “relate to” motor carrier

services within the meaning of the preemption clause.

B. State broker negligence claims fall outside the

preemptive scope of the FAAAA.

Under the Seventh Circuit’s rule, the FA A A A’s

preemption clause covers any state law that “would

have a significant economic effect on broker services.”

Ye, 74 F.4th at 459. But as in Whiting, Congress surely

“did not intend to preserve only those state laws that

would have no effect.” 563 U.S. at 607. Nor is it plausible

to read the statute as relying wholly on the safety

exception to preserve state regulation that impacts the

trucking industry while not interfering with Congress’s

pro-competitive purposes. The same overly aggressive

reading of the FAAAA’s preemptive effect, after all, led

a majority of the circuits that considered the issue to

construe the safety exception narrowly. In Ye, the court of

appeals read the phrase “with respect to motor vehicles”

to require a “direct link between negligent hiring claims

and motor vehicle safety.” 74 F.4th at 460.11 And it found

that link wanting because the safety exception failed to

make “any reference to brokers or broker services” in the

statutory text. Id. at 460.12 For all the reasons discussed

in Petitioners’ brief, the stark inconsistency between the

court of appeals’ broad reading of “relating to” in the

preemption clause and its narrow reading of “with respect

to” in the safety exception is untenable. But the risk of

such overreading exists only because the court of appeals

read the preemption clause too broadly in the first place.

In any event, the “significant economic effect” test will

likely sweep in a wide range of state measures that are

not “related to Congress’ deregulatory and pre-emptionrelated objectives,” Rowe, 552 U.S. at 371, but address

legitimate state concerns other than safety. All sorts of

things could have a “significant economic effect on broker

11. The Eleventh Circuit read the safety exception similarly

narrowly in Aspen. See 65 F.4th at 1217.

12. See also id. (“We see no mention of brokers in the safety

exception itself or in Congress’s definition of motor vehicles,

which suggests that such claims may be outside the scope of the

exception’s plain text.”).

services”—including a range of things that are surely not

preempted. If Illinois added $.25/gallon to its gasoline tax,

that would increase motor carriers’ costs that brokers

would have to pass through to shippers. If the state

adopted a 30-hour work week for all firms doing business

in Illinois, with time and a half for overtime above that

mark, that would likewise impact freight brokers’ costs

and possibly their staffing and routing decisions. If the

Illinois attorney general expanded enforcement of state

civil rights laws in the trucking and freight brokerage

industries, this might well also have a significant economic

impact on operations. It seems highly unlikely that the

“related to” language in § 14501(c)(1) was meant to sweep

in these sorts of legal measures, and yet it is equally clear

that they would meet the Seventh Circuit’s test.

All these forms of state regulation are similar to this

Court’s own example of zoning laws offered in Dan’s City.

See 569 U.S. at 264. To the extent that such laws require

motor carriers or brokers to locate their businesses

in areas that are more expensive or less convenient,

they may have a significant economic impact on motor

vehicle services. They would thus fall within the scope

of the FAAAA’s preemption clause under the Seventh

Circuit’s test. Nor are zoning laws exercises of “the safety

regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor

vehicles” under the statute’s safety exception. The only

way to make sense of Dan’s City’s conclusion that such laws

would not to be preempted is to restrict the preemption

clause’s scope to state laws that interfere with what the

FAAAA actually does, which is to remove anti-competitive

restraints in both federal and state law.

This Court’s preemption cases have defined the

preemptive scope of federal legislation with considerably

greater care. The Court has been reluctant, for example,

to find that federal regulation of a particular field, like

natural gas production, preempts generally applicable,

trans-substantive rules like state antitrust regulation.

See Oneok, 575 U.S. at 387. Here, the tort of negligent

selection of an independent contractor is a general common

law principle, not directed at the trucking industry but

applicable to a wide range of employment settings.13 It

has been adopted in at least 34 states and recognized in

§ 411 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts.14 This Court

did make clear in Morales that not all generally-applicable

principles avoid preemption under the ADA. See 504 U.S.

at 386. But that case involved efforts by the attorneys

general of seven states to use their general consumer

protection statutes to subject the major airlines to detailed

13. See, e.g., Basic Energy Services, L.P. v. Petroleum

Resource Mgt. Corp., 343 P.3d 783, 790 (Wyo. 2015) (adopting the

tort in a case involving a contractor hired to operate an oil well).

14. See Alonzo v. Menholt, 9 N.W.3d 148, 156-57 (Minn.

2024) (adopting the tort and observing that “[b]ecause the claim

at issue is a natural extension of well-established tort principles,

we discern no potential conflict between it and applicable law”);

Ruh v. Metal Recycling Services, LLC, 889 S.E.2d 577, 655 (S.C.

2023) (noting disagreement as to whether the total number of

states adopting the tort is 34 or 37 but suggesting the principle is

well-established in South Carolina law); Western Stock Ctr., Inc.

v. Sevit, Inc., 578 P.2d 1045, 1048 (Colo. 1978) (“‘The rule has been

widely adopted that an employer of an independent contractor

may be liable to one injured as a result of the contractor’s fault

where it is shown that the employer was negligent in selecting a

careless or incompetent person with whom to contract.’”) (quoting

8 A.L.R.2d 267 § 1); Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 (1965)

(stating that “[a]n employer is subject to liability for physical harm

to third persons caused by his failure to exercise reasonable care

to employ a competent and careful contractor”).

guidelines on consumer advertising and other aspects

of the airlines’ business.15 Those efforts posed obvious

anticompetitive risks, including “curtail[ing] the airlines’

ability to communicate fares to their customers.” Id. at

389. As the Court commented, “[t]he present litigation

plainly does not present a borderline question.” 504 U.S.

at 390. But no comparable anti-competitive argument

has been made against imposing the same general duty

of care that binds all employers on brokers serving the

trucking industry.

This Court’s cases have also been sensitive to the risk of

creating regulatory vacuums through overbroad readings

of statutory preemption.16 Dan’s City, for example, held

that state claims against a towing company for unlawful

disposal of a vehicle were not preempted. This Court

reasoned that “if such state-law claims are preempted,

no law would govern resolution of a non-contract-based

dispute arising from a towing company’s disposal of a

vehicle previously towed or afford a remedy for wrongful

disposal. . . . No such design can be attributed to a rational

15. Although the consumer protection statutes that the state

attorneys general proposed to use to enforce the NAAG guidelines

were generally applicable beyond the airline industry, the “Air

Travel Industry Enforcement Guidelines” themselves certainly

were not. See 504 U.S. at 379-80; Congressional Research Service,

Federal Preemption: A Legal Primer (updated May 18, 2023), at

9 (explaining Morales’s result “on the grounds that the guidelines

expressly referenced airfares and were likely to have a significant

impact on airfares”).

16. See, e.g., Pacific Gas, 461 U.S. at 207-08 (“It is almost

inconceivable that Congress would have left a regulatory vacuum;

the only reasonable inference is that Congress intended the states

to continue to make these judgments.”).

Congress.” 569 U.S. at 265. Similarly, federal law does not

regulate the conduct of brokers in the trucking industry,

and it provides no remedy for accident victims when a

motor carrier with a poor safety record turns out to be

under-capitalized and unable to pay a judgment. It is

unlikely Congress intended such a result.17

A rational Congress would have anticipated this sort

of problem—not by more extensively regulating brokers,

but by conceiving of the statute’s preemptive force as

limited to its central deregulatory objective. After all,

the competitive markets that the FAAAA sought to

foster are constantly changing and adapting. The sort of

preemption-without-replacement scheme envisioned by

the Seventh Circuit is particularly vulnerable to changes

in the structure of a market, such as the shift in the

trucking industry to largely unregulated brokers playing

a central role. Especially in the absence of a federal agency

with broad regulatory authority, state law is more likely

to be nimble in responding to such changes. In such an

area, the most plausible interpretation of the preemption

clause is that it protects the FAAAA’s deregulatory

and pro-competitive provisions from state interference,

without gutting states’ ability to respond to market shifts

that imperil Congress’s effort to preserve state safety

regulation.

Significantly, a large body of lower court precedent

interprets the ADA’s similar preemption provision for

17. See Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U.S. 238, 251

(1984) ((“It is difficult to believe that Congress would, without

comment, remove all means of judicial recourse for those injured

by illegal conduct.”) (cited in Dan’s City, 569 U.S. at 265).

airlines in precisely this way. As Petitioners point out,

“every federal court of appeals to address the question

has agreed that the ADA preemption provision—which

likewise preempts state laws ‘related to a price, route,

or service’ of an air carrier—does not preempt state

safety-related tort claims for personal injuries caused by

negligent airline operations, and so those claims remain

available even though the ADA does not include any

express safety exception to its preemption provision.” Petr.

Br. at 47-48 (collecting cases).18 These ADA cases confirm

what this Court’s preemption precedents prescribe—

that is, that the FAAAA’s preemptive scope should be

carefully circumscribed in order to preserve the state law

background, except to the extent that Congress explicitly

changed it.

II. General Principles of Preemption Doctrine Support

a Narrower Reading of the FAAAA’s Preemptive

Scope than the Seventh Circuit Offered.

This Court’s preemption jurisprudence “examine[s]

. . . arguments about [a statute’s] preemptive effect much

as we would any other about statutory meaning, looking to

the text and context of the law in question and guided by

18. The FAAAA copied the preemption provision of the

ADA, see Rowe, 552 U.S. at 370, but the ADA contained no safety

exception like the FAAAA’s. But it would be odd to argue that the

addition of an explicit carve-out for safety regulation broadened

the scope of the preemption clause as it applied to other forms

of non-economic regulation that might not be captured by the

safety exception. The FAAAA’s express safety exception simply

underscores what was true of the ADA without the exception—

neither law preempts state regulation outside the economic sphere

of rates, routes, entry controls, and the like.

the traditional tools of statutory interpretation.” Virginia

Uranium, 587 U.S. at 767 (plurality opinion). That approach

has always included attention to statutory purposes in

delimiting the scope of those statutes preemptive effect.

And it has also often applied a presumption that statutes

do not preempt state law unless Congress’s intent to do

so is clear.

This Court’s preemption cases have looked

to statutory purposes to narrow the scope of

ambiguous language.

Preemption cases should always begin (and sometimes

end) with the text. But statutory terms like “related to”

and “with respect to” can be read narrowly or broadly; the

task of interpretation is to determine what meaning best

reflects Congress’s intention. This Court has divined that

intention by looking to context, including the remainder

of the statute, the underlying purposes that Congress

was trying to achieve, and the state law background

against which Congress legislated. This approach is no

surrender of textualism; as Justice Barrett has observed,

“a vacuum is no home for a textualist.” Biden, 600 U.S. at

518 (Barrett, J., concurring).

In a careful exploration of recent preemption cases,

for example, the late Professor Dan Meltzer argued that

a purely textualist approach often could not resolve the

complex statutory questions presented, to the extent that

even dedicated and principled textualist justices had to

resort to some degree of purposivist analysis. See Daniel

J. Meltzer, Preemption and Textualism, 112 Mich. L. Rev.

1 (2013). Professor Meltzer used the “related to” language

of § 14501(c)(1) as an example in which “[o]ne doubts that

anyone in the enacting Congress even considered, much

less entered into a legislative compromise concerning,

the effect of the Act” on state laws like the one in Rowe

v. New Hampshire Motor Transport Ass’n, 552 U.S. 364

(2008).19 Perhaps for that reason, the Court felt obliged

to explain why the Maine statute at issue—which forbade

anyone other than Maine-licensed tobacco retailers to

accept orders for delivery of tobacco—interfered with the

particular pro-competitive purposes of the FAAAA. See

552 U.S. at 372-73. 20

A similar line of cases under the Employee Retirement

Income Security Act (ERISA) likewise combines textual

analysis with attention to the limits of Congress’s

statutory purposes.21 “If ‘relate to’ were taken to extend to

the furthest stretch of its indeterminacy,” Justice Souter

wrote in Travelers, then for all practical purposes preemption would never run its course.” 514 U.S. at 655. 22

The Court has thus eschewed “uncritical literalism” and

19. See Meltzer, supra, at 20.

20. See also Congressional Research Service, supra, at 6

(observing that “the Court has cautioned against strictly literal

interpretations of ‘related to’ preemption clauses” and “has looked

to Congress’s statutory objectives to cabin the clauses’ scope”).

21. See Meltzer, supra, at 20-24 (citing, inter alia, N.Y. State

Conf. of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514

U.S. 645, 656 (1995)).

22. See also Cal. Div. of Labor Standards Enf’t v. Dillingham

Constr., N.A., Inc., 519 U.S. 316, 335 (1997) (Scalia, J., concurring)

(“[A]pplying the ‘relate to’ provision [of ERISA] according to its

terms was a project doomed to failure, since, as many a curbstone

philosopher has observed, everything is related to everything

else.”).

“look[ed] instead to the objectives of the ERISA statute

as a guide to the scope of the state law that Congress

understood would survive.” Id. at 656. In Dan’s City, this

Court explicitly quoted this passage from Travelers in

construing the preemptive force of the FAAAA. 569 U.S.

at 260 (quoting Travelers, 514 U.S. at 655-66).

To be sure, individual justices of this Court have

rightly expressed concern that “[p]re-emption analysis

should not be ‘[a] freewheeling judicial inquiry into

whether a state statute is in tension with federal

objectives, but an inquiry into whether the ordinary

meanings of state and federal law conflict.’” Wyeth, 555

U.S. at 588 (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment)

(quoting Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, 544 U.S. 431,

459 (2005) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting

in part)). 23 Certainly state law should never be preempted

based on untethered legislative purposes not grounded

in the text. But that is a far cry from what this Court

has done in FAAAA cases, which is to understand the

scope of statutory terminology (“related to”) in light of

the purpose evident in the remainder of the Act, which

is to eliminate regulatory barriers to competition in the

trucking industry. Whether or not the words will bear an

expansive interpretation to cover all state laws having any

economic impact on that industry, this Court has instead

interpreted the preemptive language so as to displace the

state law regulatory background only within the scope of

Congress’s more limited purpose.

23. See also Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 529

U.S. 861, 911 (2000) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“[P]reemption

analysis is, or at least should be, a matter of precise statutory

[or regulatory] construction rather than an exercise in free-form

judicial policymaking.”).

B. This Court’s traditional presumption against

preemption is not inconsistent with a focus on

statutory text.

In preemption cases, the “traditional tools of statutory

construction” have generally included an interpretive

canon—the presumption against preemption. That

presumption dates back at least as far as Rice v. Santa Fe

Elevator Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 230 (1947), which said that

preemption analysis should “start with the assumption

that the historic police powers of the States were not to

be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the

clear and manifest purpose of Congress.” 24 This Court

does not always invoke the Rice presumption; in many

cases Congress has made its meaning clear, and no canon

of construction is necessarily to resolve the dispute. The

present dispute may well be one of those cases; amici

24. This Court’s opinions have not been altogether consistent

as to the Rice presumption’s scope. Rice itself emphasized

that “Congress legislated here in a field which the States have

traditionally occupied,” 331 U.S. at 230, and some cases have

suggested that the presumption should not apply in areas with

“a history of significant federal presence,” United States v.

Locke, 529 U.S. 89, 108 (2000). Other cases have affirmed that

the presumption applies “‘[i]n all pre-emption cases.’” Wyeth,

555 U.S. at 565 (quoting Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470,

485 (1996)). Certainly, it is often difficult to tell whether a case

falls in a “federal” or “state” field—Locke, for example, involved

both maritime safety and compliance with international treaties,

on the one hand, but also regulation of pollution in state waters,

on the other. See generally Young, Ordinary Diet, supra, at 33240 (arguing against any effort to distinguish between state and

federal domains). But there is no dispute in this case that broker

liability for negligent selection of an independent contractor

involves a field of traditional state regulation.

agree with Petitioners that it can readily be resolved

on a fairly straightforward reading of the FAAAA’s

text, especially in view of Congress limited purpose to

eliminate anti-competitive regulation. But to the extent

that the question is close, the Rice presumption plays a

valuable role.

Rice’s presumption against preemption has never

required courts to strain or ignore statutory text,

and it falls within a longstanding tradition of judicial

interpretation. It reflects both the federalist context in

which Congress operates and constitutionally-derived

regard for federalism. As such, Rice’s presumption is

compatible with judicial obligations to respect statutory

text and serve as faithful agents of Congress.

The Rice presumption informs statutory

meaning by providing important context,

rather than asking courts to set aside the