1. What is the effect of the Maine law, if allowed to stand, on interstate carriers?

2. If this law is constitutional, what will happen to interstate carriers and their activities within particular states?

Maine passed a law that prohibited anyone other than a Maine-licensed tobacco retailer from accepting an order for delivery of tobacco. The law required the retailer to arrange for delivery with a special receipt showing that someone over the age of 18 had received and signed for the tobacco products delivered. Out-of-state shippers and tobacco sellers challenged the law as one that favored Maine tobacco retailers. The state of Maine argued that its law was passed to prevent the public health hazard of minors becoming addicted to tobacco. The federal district court granted summary judgment for the shippers, and the court of appeals affirmed. The state of Maine appealed. 

JUDICIAL OPINION

BREYER, Justice … The provision requires the carrier to check each shipment for certain markings and to compare it against the Maine attorney general’s list of proscribed shippers. And it thereby directly regulates a significant aspect of the motor carrier’s package pickup and delivery service. In this way it creates the kind of state-mandated regulation that the federal Act pre-empts. 

Maine replies that the regulation will impose no significant additional costs upon carriers. But even were that so (and the carriers deny it), Maine’s reply is off the mark. As with the recipient-verification provision, the “deemed to know” provision would freeze in place and immunize from competition a service-related system that carriers do not (or in the future might not) wish to provide. To allow Maine to insist that the carriers provide a special checking system would allow other States to do the same. And to interpret the federal law to permit these, and similar, state requirements could easily lead to a patchwork of state service-determining laws, rules, and regulations. 

That state regulatory patchwork is inconsistent with Congress’ major legislative effort to leave such decisions, where federally unregulated, to the competitive marketplace. And to allow Maine directly to regulate carrier services would permit other States to do the same. Given the number of States through which carriers travel, the number of products, the variety of potential adverse public health effects, the many different kinds of regulatory rules potentially available, and the difficulty of finding a legal criterion for separating permissible from impermissible publichealth- oriented regulations. 

In this case, the state law is not general, it does not affect truckers solely in their capacity as members of the general public, the impact is significant, and the connection with trucking is not tenuous, remote, or peripheral. The state statutes aim directly at the carriage of goods, a commercial field where carriage by commercial motor vehicles plays a major role. The state statutes require motor carrier operators to perform certain services, thereby limiting their ability to provide incompatible alternative services; and they do so simply because the State seeks to enlist the motor carrier operators as allies in its enforcement efforts. 

Maine adds that it possesses legal authority to prevent any tobacco shipments from entering into or moving within the State, and that the broader authority must encompass the narrower authority to regulate the manner of tobacco shipments. But even assuming purely for argument’s sake that Maine possesses the broader authority, its conclusion does not follow. To accept that conclusion would permit Maine to regulate carrier routes, carrier rates, and carrier services, all on the ground that such regulation would not restrict carriage of the goods as seriously as would a total ban on shipments. And it consequently would severely undermine the effectiveness of Congress’ pre-emptive provision. Indeed, it would create the very exception that we have just rejected, extending that exception to all other products a State might ban. We have explained why we do not believe Congress intended that result. Supra, at 996–998. 

Finally, Maine says that to set aside its regulations will seriously harm its efforts to prevent cigarettes from falling into the hands of minors. The Solicitor General denies that this is so. He suggests that Maine, like other States, can prohibit all persons from providing tobacco products to minors; that it can ban all non-face-to-face sales of tobacco; that it might pass other laws of general applicability; and that it can, if necessary, seek appropriate federal regulation.

For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.