What Two Recent Supreme Court Decisions Tell Us About Federal Preemption

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC and Monsanto Co. v. Durnell offer an important reminder that preemption disputes often turn less on broad policy concerns and more on the specific language Congress chose when drafting a statute. Although both cases involved state-law tort claims confronting a federal regulatory scheme, the Court reached seemingly different results.

In Montgomery, a truck driver who suffered catastrophic injuries in a collision alleged that a freight broker negligently hired an unsafe motor carrier. The broker argued that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA)—a federal statute—barred the claim. The Court, however, unanimously disagreed, holding that the FAAAA’s “safety exception” preserves the states’ authority to regulate motor vehicle safety. Because negligent-hiring claims are part of a state’s traditional authority to protect public safety, the lawsuit could proceed.

Just weeks later, the Court reached what at first glance appears to be the opposite conclusion in Monsanto. There, a Roundup user obtained a jury verdict based on Monsanto’s alleged failure to provide a cancer warning on its product label. But the Supreme Court held that the claim was preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the federal statute governing pesticide registration, labeling, and regulation. According to the Court, a state-law verdict requiring Monsanto to add a warning would impose a labeling requirement different from the federal labeling scheme approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Taken together, these decisions suggest that the Court is not uniformly hostile to tort claims. Rather, it is increasingly focused on statutory text. Where Congress expressly preserves room for state-law remedies, as it did in Montgomery, those claims are likely to survive. But where Congress creates a uniform federal regime and bars additional state requirements, as the Court found in Monsanto, state-law claims may give way.

For attorneys on both sides, the lesson is straightforward: in modern preemption litigation, the outcome may depend less on the nature of the claim than on the precise words Congress used.