United Air Lines, Inc v. Division of Industrial Safety of California

• Decision Date: 19 October 1981
• Docket Number: No. 80-1494,80-1494
• Parties: UNITED AIR LINES, INC. v. DIVISION OF INDUSTRIAL SAFETY OF the State of CALIFORNIA et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

454 U.S. 944

102 S.Ct. 485

70 L.Ed.2d 255

UNITED AIR LINES, INC.

v DIVISION OF INDUSTRIAL SAFETY OF the State of CALIFORNIA et al

No. 80-1494

Supreme Court of the United States

October 19, 1981

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The petition for writ of certiorari is denied.

Justice WHITE, dissenting.

Petitioner maintains operations and maintenance facilities for its aircraft at San Francisco International Airport. Re- spondent, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (formerly Division of Industrial Safety) of the Department of Industrial Relations of the State of California (Cal/OSH), is responsible for a state occupational safety and health enforcement program, approved by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration under 29 U.S.C. § 667(c). The state enforcement plan applies to all places of employment in California "except a place the health and safety jurisdiction over which is vested by law in, and actively exercised by, any state or federal agency other than [Cal/OSH]." Cal.Lab.Code § 6303(a) (West Supp.1981). Under § 605(b) of the Federal Aviation Act, 72 Stat. 778, as amended, 49 U.S.C. § 1425(b), the Federal Aviation Administrator is required to

"employ inspectors who shall be charged with the duty (1) of making such inspections of aircraft, aircraft engines, propellers, and appliances designed for use in air transportation, during manufacture, and while used by an air carrier in air transportation, as may be necessary to enable the Secretary of Transportation to determine that such aircraft, aircraft engines, propellers, and appliances are in safe condition and are properly maintained for operation in air transportation . . . ."

Petitioner contends that the operation of the federal scheme of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) supervision pre-empts enforcement of the state scheme by Cal/OSH.

Between June 1976 and August 1978, Cal/OSH conducted a number of inspections of petitioner's San Francisco facilities. As a result of these inspections, a number of citations were issued, alleging violations of various health and safety standards. In each instance, United contested the citations, arguing that Cal/OSH lacked jurisdiction over its facilities because of pre-emption by the FAA. Prior to the completion of litigation in the state agencies and courts, United filed a complaint in Federal District Court, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against further Cal/OSH inspections and citations.^* Specifically, United alleged that the actions of the defendants were "beyond their jurisdictional authority, interfer[ed] with and disrupt[ed] the federal statutory scheme with respect to safety . . . and violate[d] United's right to due process of law." The District Court granted petitioner a preliminary injunction prohibiting further enforcement by Cal/OSH or the Appeals Board. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, 613 F.2d 814, holding that the complaint should be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. 663 F.2d 814 (1980).

The Court of Appeals confused two distinct lines of reasoning. One of these lines I find unobjectionable, although improperly applied in this case; the other, however, substantially misread our previous cases on when the "defensive" character of a federal question is insufficient to create federal-court jurisdiction. The first argument noted simply that the mere fact that California has incorporated a body of federal law as the basis for a state-law distinction does not necessarily cause a case under the state law to be also a case under the law of the United States. Had United raised only the question of the meaning of the limits on § 6303(a)'s grant of authority to Cal/OSH, this would have been correct and sufficient to dispose of the case. United's complaint, however, was not so limited. Petitioner alleged that the state action interfered with and disrupted the federal statutory scheme. This can only be read as a claim of federal pre-emption. The Court of Appeals responded, erroneously in my view, to this issue of pre-emption by characterizing it as defensive and an inadequate basis for federal-court jurisdiction:

"In the instant case, United is a defendant in the state court action to enforce citations issued by the Division and has stated that it has asserted and will continue to assert jurisdictional defenses in that action. Therefore, United's allegations of federal question jurisdiction in this appeal remain defensive in nature, and it cannot assert its jurisdictional objections to the state court action as a basis for jurisdiction in the federal courts." 633 F.2d, at 817.

In Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149, 29 S.Ct. 42, 53 L.Ed. 126 (1908), the plaintiff in Federal District Court had settled a claim against a railroad in exchange for a continuing free pass, a contract which the railroad, it was alleged, would no longer honor because of a recently passed federal statute. The plaintiff sought a judgment as to whether the Act forbade the free pass and, if it did, whether it was constitutional as applied in the circumstances. This Court held that the case was not a suit arising under the laws of the United States: "It is not enough that the plaintiff alleges some anticipated defense to his cause of action and asserts that the defense is invalidated by some [federal law]." Id., at 152, 29 S.Ct., at 43. Other cases are to the same effect. Tennessee v. Union & Planters Bank, 152 U.S. 454, 14 S.Ct. 654, 38 L.Ed. 511 (1894); Metcalf v. Watertown, 128 U.S. 586, 9 S.Ct. 173, 32 L.Ed. 543 (1888).

In each of the above cases, the federal plaintiff's cause of action against the defendant was not grounded in federal law; he merely sought to adjudicate the validity of an anticipated defense to his action. Here, United's complaint, as I read it, included the claim that under federal law the FAA had exclusive jurisdiction to oversee safety at airline maintenance facilities and therefore, under the Supremacy Clause, state regulation was foreclosed. No part of this claim was grounded in state law.

In Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 67 S.Ct. 1146, 91 L.Ed. 1447 (1947), the Illinois Commerce Commission set for hearing a complaint that a warehouseman was charging illegal rates under state law. The Commission denied the warehouseman's claim that the United States Warehouse Act superseded the authority of the Commission to regulate in the manner sought by the complaint. The warehouseman then...