In an attempt to stop kids from skirting laws against the sale of tobacco to minors by ordering cigarettes over the Web, Maine passed a law that barred anyone other than a state-licensed tobacco retailer from accepting delivery of cigarettes. In addition, retailers had to use a delivery service that verifies that the addressee is the actual purchaser, is of legal age to purchase tobacco, is the person who signs for delivery, and matches a photo ID if under the age of 27.

A second section defined rules for how a transporter would know if a product contains tobacco. A person is deemed to know, the statute said, if the package is marked as tobacco and contains the license number of a licensed retailer or if the sender's name is on the state attorney general's list of unlicensed retailers.

Pre-Emption Doctrine

However, in 1994 Congress deregulated the trucking industry, barring states from passing laws "related to a price, route or service of any motor carrier." Maine's law impacted trucking services and thus was pre-empted by the federal law.

The court relied on Morales v. TWA, in which it held that a similar federal law pre-empted states from regulating air travel. Congress actually copied language from the air-travel act into the trucking law. In such case, Justice Stephen Breyer said, the Supreme Court's interpretation in the earlier case essentially attaches to the new law.

In Morales, the court held that state laws regarding air carriers were pre-empted by the federal law even if the state law's effect was only indirect, so long as the state laws had a "significant impact" on Congress' intent to deregulate the industry.

No Public Safety Exemption

The state had argued that because of the public-health concerns at issue, it should get an exemption from the pre-emption doctrine. But the Supreme Court disagreed. "The Act says nothing about a public-health exception," Breyer wrote. Indeed, it does provide for certain exceptions, "but the list says nothing about public health."

Maine also argued that Congress' intent involved economic regulation, not public-health intervention. But Congress actually considered specifying "economic regulation" and decided against it -- in no small part, the court said, because "it is frequently difficult to distinguish between a state's "economic"-related and "health"-related motivations."

Under the court's holding in this case, states can only regulate truckers as "members of the general public," or in ways that are only tenuously related to trucking.

Justice Ginsburg's View

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg concurred with the opinion but expressed concern about the gap the ruling leaves in states' abilities to stop children from buying cigarettes. She encouraged Congress to fill that gap.

"As cyberspace acts as a risk-free zone where minors can anonymously purchase tobacco, unrestricted online tobacco sales create a major barrier to comprehensive youth tobacco control," wrote a group called the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium in a brief.

Ginsburg shared that concern. "I doubt that the drafters of ... a statute designed to deregulate the carriage of goods anticipated the measure's facilitation of minors' access to tobacco. Now alerted to the problem, Congress has the capacity to act with care and dispatch to provide an effective solution," she wrote.