Am. Trucking Ass'ns, Inc. v. City of L.A.

the agreement. The amended tariff makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by fine or imprisonment, for a terminal operator to grant access to an unregistered drayage truck.

Petitioner American Trucking Associations, Inc. (ATA), whose members include many of the drayage companies at the Port, sued the Port and City, seeking an injunction against the concession agreement's requirements. ATA principally contended that the requirements are expressly preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA), see 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1). ATA also argued that even if the requirements are valid, Castle v. Hayes Freight Lines, Inc., 348 U. S. 61, 75 S. Ct. 191, 99 L. Ed. 68, prevents the Port from enforcing the requirements by withdrawing a defaulting company's right to operate at the Port. The District Court held that neither §14501(c)(1) nor Castle prevented the Port from proceeding with its program. The Ninth Circuit mainly affirmed, finding only the driver-employment provision preempted and rejecting petitioner's Castle claim.

Held:

1. The FAAAA expressly preempts the concession agreement's placard and parking requirements. Section 14501(c)(1) preempts a state “law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1). Because the parties agree that the Port's placard and parking requirements relate to a motor carrier's price, route, or service with respect to transporting property, the only disputed question is whether those requirements “hav[e] the force and effect of law.” Section 14501(c)(1) draws a line between a government's exercise of regulatory authority and its own contract-based participation in a market. The statute's “force and effect of law” language excludes from exercised classic regulatory authority in imposing the placard and parking requirements. It forced terminal operators--and through them, trucking companies--to alter their conduct by implementing a criminal prohibition punishable by imprisonment. That counts as action “having the force and effect of law” if anything does.

The Port's primary argument to the contrary focuses on motives rather than means. But the Port's proprietary intentions do not control. When the government employs a coercive mechanism, available to no private party, it acts with the force and effect of law, whether or not it does so to turn a profit. Only if it forgoes the (distinctively governmental) exercise of legal authority may it escape §14501(c)(1)s preemptive scope. That the criminal sanctions fall on terminal operators, not directly on the trucking companies, also makes no difference. See, e.g., Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transp. Assn., 552 U. S. 364, 371-373, 128 S. Ct. 989, 169 L. Ed. 2d 933. Pp. 648-652, 186 L. Ed. 2d, at 184-187.

2. This Court declines to decide in the case's present, pre-enforcement posture whether Castle limits the way the Port can enforce the financial-capacity and truck-maintenance requirements upheld by the Ninth Circuit. Castle such regulations. And at this juncture, there is no basis for finding that the Port will actually use the concession agreement's penalty provision as Castle proscribes. Pp. 652-655, 186 L. Ed. 2d, at 187-188.

660 F. 3d 384, reversed in part and remanded.

643Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 655.

JUSTICE Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case, we consider whether federal law preempts certain provisions of an agreement that trucking companies must sign before they can transport cargo at the Port of Los Angeles. We hold that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA) expressly preempts two of the contract’s provisions, which require such a company to develop an off-street parking plan and display designated placards on its vehicles. We decline to decide in the case’s present, pre-enforcement posture whether, under Castle v. Hayes Freight Lines, Inc., 348 U. S. 61, 75 S. Ct. 191, 99 L. Ed. 68 (1954), federal law governing licenses for interstate motor carriers prevents the Port from using the agreement’s penalty clause to punish violations of other, non-preempted provisions.

I

A

The Port of Los Angeles, a division of the City of Los Angeles, is the largest port in the country. The Port owns marine terminal facilities, which it leases to “terminal operators” (such as shipping lines and stevedoring companies) that load cargo onto and unload it from docking ships. Short-haul trucks, called “drayage trucks,” move the cargo into and out of the Port. The trucking companies providing those drayage services are all federally licensed motor carriers. Before the events giving rise to this case, they contracted with terminal operators to transport cargo, but did not enter into agreements with the Port itself.

they threatened, stymied the Board’s development project for almost 10 years.

To address the community’s concerns, the Board implemented a Clean Truck Program beginning in 2007. Among other actions, the Board devised a standard-form “concession agreement” to govern the relationship between the Port and any trucking company seeking to operate on the premises. Under that contract, a company may transport cargo at the Port in exchange for complying with various requirements. The two directly at issue here compel the company to (1) affix a placard on each truck with a phone number for reporting environmental or safety concerns (You’ve seen the type: “How am I driving? 213-867-5309”) and (2) submit a plan listing off-street parking locations for each truck when not in service. Three other provisions in the agreement, formerly disputed in this litigation, relate to the company’s financial capacity, its maintenance of trucks, and its employment of drivers.

The Board then amended the Port’s tariff to ensure that every company providing drayage services at the facility would enter into the concession agreement. The mechanism the Board employed is a criminal prohibition on terminal operators. The amended tariff provides that “no Terminal Operator shall permit access into any Terminal in the Port of Los Angeles to any Drayage Truck unless such Drayage Truck is registered under a Concession [Agreement].” App. 105. A violation of that provision—which occurs “each and every day” a terminal operator provides access to an unregistered truck—is a misdemeanor. Id., at 86. It is punishable by a fine of up to $500 or a prison sentence of up to six months. Id., at 85-86.

The concession agreement itself spells out penalties for any signatory trucking company that violates its requirements. When a company commits a “Minor Default,” the Port may issue a warning letter or order the company to undertake “corrective action,” complete a “course of . . . a trucking company’s license to operate at the Port for a prior violation of one of the contract provisions involved in this case. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 42-43, 49-51.

B

Petitioner American Trucking Associations, Inc. (ATA), is a national trade association representing the trucking industry, including drayage companies that operate at the Port. ATA filed suit against the Port and City, seeking an injunction against the five provisions of the concession agreement discussed above. The complaint principally contended that §14501(c)(1) of the FAAAA expressly preempts those requirements. That statutory section states:

“[A] State [or local government] may not enact or enforce a law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.” 49 U. S. C. §14501(c)(1).

ATA also contended that a separate provision, 49 U. S. C. §14506(a), preempts the agreement’s placard requirement. That section bars state and local governments from enacting or enforcing “any law, rule, regulation[,] standard, or other provision having the force and effect of law” that obligates a motor carrier to display any form of identification other than those the Secretary of Transportation has required. Ibid. The just-quoted language is the only part of §14506(a) disputed here, and it is materially identical to language in §14501(c)(1). We focus on §14501(c)(1) for ease of reference, but everything we say about that provision also applies to §14506(a).

could not bar a federally licensed motor carrier from its highways for prior violations of state safety regulations. We reasoned in Castle that the State’s action conflicted with federal law providing for certification of motor carriers; and ATA argued here that a similar conflict would inhere in applying the concession agreement to suspend or revoke a trucking company’s privileges. Following a bench trial, the District Court held that neither §14501(c)(1) nor Castle prevents the Port from proceeding with any part of its Clean Truck Program.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit mainly affirmed. Most important for our purposes, the court held that §14501(c)(1) does not preempt the agreement’s placard and parking requirements because they do not “‘ ha[ve] the force and effect of law.’” 660 F. 3d 384, 395 (2011) (quoting §14501(c)(1)). The court reasoned that those requirements, rather than regulating the drayage market, advance the Port’s own “business interest” in “managing its facilities.” Id., at 401. Both provisions were “designed to address [a] specific proprietary problem[ ]”—the need to “increase the community good-will necessary to facilitate Port expansion.” Id., at 406-407; see id., at 409. The Ninth Circuit also held the agreement’s financial-capacity and truck-maintenance provisions not preempted, for reasons not relevant here. Section 14501(c)(1), a ban on using all of a State’s freeways,” the court reasoned, “a limitation on access to a single Port does not prohibit motor carriers” from generally participating in interstate commerce. 660 F. 3d, at 403.

For those curious, the court held that the financial-capacity requirement is not “‘related to a [motor carrier’s] price, route, or service,’” and that the truck-maintenance requirement falls within a statutory exception for safety regulation. 660 F. 3d, at 395, 403-406 (quoting §14501(c)(1)); see §14501(c)(2)(A) (safety exception).

We granted certiorari to resolve two questions: first, whether §14501(c)(1) of the FAAAA preempts the concession agreement’s placard and parking provisions; and second, whether Castle precludes reliance on the agreement’s penalty clause to suspend or revoke a trucking company’s privileges. See 568 U. S. 1119, 133 S. Ct. 927, 184 L. Ed. 2d 718 (2013). Contrary to the Ninth Circuit, we hold have now become final; accordingly, the Port could try to apply its penalty provision to trucking companies that have violated those surviving requirements. But we nonetheless decline to address the Castle question because the case’s pre-enforcement posture obscures the nature of the agreement’s remedial scheme, rendering any decision at this point a shot in the dark.

ATA’s petition for certiorari did not seek review of the Ninth Circuit’s determination that the truck-maintenance provision is valid. The petition did ask us to consider the court’s ruling on the financial-capacity provision, but we declined to do so.

II

Section 14501(c)(1), once again, preempts a state “law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier . . . private agreement,” made to advance the Port’s commercial and “proprietary interests.” Brief for Respondent City of Los Angeles et al. 19 (Brief for City of Los Angeles) (internal quotation marks omitted).

The Port’s brief occasionally frames the issue differently—as whether a freestanding “market-participant exception” limits §14501(c)(1)’s express terms. See Brief for City of Los Angeles 24. But at oral argument, the Port emphasized that the supposed exception it invoked in fact derives from §14501(c)(1)’s “force and effect of law” language. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 31 (“[W]hat we are calling the market participant exception . . . is generally congruent with[ ] what is meant by Congress by the term ‘force and effect of law’”); id., at 39-40 (“I’m . . . relying on the language . . . force and effect of law,” which “invites a market participant analysis”). We therefore have no occasion to consider whether or when a preemption clause lacking such language would except a state or local government’s proprietary actions.

We can agree with the Port on this premise: Section 14501(c)(1) draws a rough line between a government’s such everyday contractual arrangements from the clause’s scope. That phrasing targets the State acting as a State, not as any market actor—or otherwise said, the State acting in a regulatory rather than proprietary mode.

But that statutory reading gets the Port nothing, because it exercised classic regulatory authority—complete with the use of criminal penalties—in imposing the placard and parking requirements at issue here. Consider again how those requirements work. They are, to be sure, contained in contracts between the Port and trucking companies. But those contracts do not stand alone, as the result merely of the parties’ voluntary commitments. The Board of Harbor Commissioners aimed to “require parties who access Port land and terminals for purposes of providing drayage services” to enter into concession agreements with the Port. App. 107, 108 (Board’s “Findings”). And it accomplished that objective by amending the Port’s tariff—a form of municipal ordinance—to provide that “no Terminal Operator shall permit” a drayage truck to gain “access into any Terminal in the Port” unless the truck is “registered under” such a concession agreement. Id., at 105. A violation of that tariff provision is a violation of criminal law. And it is punishable by a fine or a prison sentence of up to six months. Id., at 85-86. So the contract here functions as part and parcel of a governmental program wielding coercive power over private parties, backed by the threat of criminal punishment.

has soft edges. But this case takes us nowhere near those uncertain boundaries. Contractual commitments resulting not from ordinary bargaining (as in Wolens), but instead from the threat of criminal sanctions manifest the government qua government, performing its prototypical regulatory role.

The Port’s primary argument to the contrary, like the Ninth Circuit’s, focuses on motive preemptive scope.

The Port also tries another tack, reminding us that the criminal sanctions here fall on terminal operators alone, not on the trucking companies subject to the agreement’s requirements; hence, the Port maintains, the matter of “criminal penalties is a red herring.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 31; see Brief for City of Los Angeles 39-40. But we fail to see why the target of the sanctions makes any difference. The Port selected an indirect but wholly effective means of “requir[ing] parties . . . providing drayage services” to display placards and submit parking plans: To wit, the Port required terminal operators, on pain of criminal penalties, to insist that the truckers make those commitments. App. 108; see supra, at 645, 650, 186 L. Ed. 2d, at 182, 185. We have often rejected efforts by States to avoid preemption by shifting their regulatory focus from one company to another in the same supply chain. See, e.g., Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transp. Assn., 552 U. S. 364, 371-373, 128 S. Ct. 989, 169 L. Ed. 2d 933 (2008) (finding preemption under the FAAAA although the State’s requirements directly targeted retailers rather than motor carriers); Engine Mfrs. Assn. v. South Coast Air Quality Management Dist., 541 U. S. 246, 255, 124 S. Ct. 1756, 158 L. Ed. 2d 529 (2004) (finding preemption under the Clean Air Act although the requirements directly targeted car buyers rather than sellers). The same goes here. The Port made its regulation of drayage trucks mandatory by imposing criminal penalties on the entities hiring all such trucks at the facility. Slice it or dice it any which way, the Port thus acted with the “force of law.”

III

Our rejection of the concession agreement’s placard and parking requirements does not conclude this to license interstate motor carriers, as well as a carefully circumscribed power to suspend or terminate those licenses for violations of law. That statute, we held, implicitly prohibited a State from “tak[ing] action”—like a ban on the use of its highways—“amounting to a suspension or revocation of an interstate carrier’s [federally] granted right to operate.” 348 U. S., at 63-64, 75 S. Ct. 191, 99 L. Ed. 68.

The parties here dispute whether Castle restricts the Port’s remedial authority. The Port echoes the Ninth Circuit’s view that banning a truck from “ all of a State’s freeways” is meaningfully different from denying it “access to a single Port.” 660 F. 3d, at 403; see Brief for City of Los Angeles 49. ATA responds that because the Port is a “crucial channel of interstate commerce,” Castle applies to it just as much as to roads. Brief for Petitioner 18.

the state’s regulations may be barred from the state’s highways.” Brief for ATA, O. T. 1954, No. 44, p. 12; see Brief for Respondent, id., p. 23 (A State may “stop and prevent from continuing on the highway any motor vehicle which it finds not to be in compliance”). And ATA reiterates that view here, as does the United States as amicus curiae. See Reply Brief 22; Brief for United States 29-30. So the Port would not violate Castle if it barred a truck from operating at its facilities to prevent an ongoing violation of the agreement’s requirements.

And at this juncture, we have no basis for finding that the Port will ever use the agreement’s penalty provision for anything more than that. That provision, to be sure, might be read to give the Port broader authority: As noted earlier, the relevant text enables the Port to suspend or revoke a trucking company’s right to provide drayage services at the facility would qualify. And the Port has in fact never used its suspension or revocation power to penalize a past violation of those requirements. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 43, 50-51. Indeed, the Port’s brief states that “it does not claim[ ] the authority to punish past, cured violations of the requirements challenged here through suspension or revocation.” Brief for City of Los Angeles 62 (internal quotation marks omitted). So the kind of enforcement ATA fears, and believes inconsistent with Castle, might never come to pass at all.

In these circumstances, we decide not to decide ATA’s Castle-based challenge. That claim, by its nature, attacks the Port’s enforcement scheme. But given the pre-enforcement posture of this case, we cannot tell what that scheme entails. It might look like the one forbidden in Castle (as ATA anticipates), or else it might not (as the Port assures us). We see no reason to take a guess now about time enough to address the Castle question when, if ever, the Port enforces its agreement in a way arguably violating that decision.

IV

Section 14501(c)(1) of the FAAAA preempts the placard and parking provisions of the Port’s concession agreement. We decline to decide on the present record ATA’s separate challenge, based on Castle, to that agreement’s penalty provision. Accordingly, the judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed in part, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Concur by:Thomas

Concur

JUSTICE Thomas, concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion in full. I write separately to highlight a constitutional concern regarding §601 of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (FAAAA), 108 Stat. 1606, a statute the Court has now considered twice this Term. See Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, ante, p. 251, 133 S. Ct. 1769, 185 L. Ed. 2d 909 (2013).

The Constitution grants Congress authority “[t]o regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). Section 14501 of Title 49 is titled “Federal authority over intrastate transportation.” (Emphasis added.) The tension between §14501 and the Constitution is apparent, because the assertion of congressional authority cannot be reconciled with our constitutional system of enumerated powers.

The Supremacy Clause provides the constitutional basis for the pre-emption of state laws. Art. VI, cl. 2 (“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be Pursuance” of the Constitution are supreme. See Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 460, 111 S. Ct. 2395, 115 L. Ed. 2d 410 (1991) (“As long as it is acting within the powers granted it under the Constitution, Congress may impose its will on the States” (emphasis added)); Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U. S. 555, 583-587, 129 S. Ct. 1187, 173 L. Ed. 2d 51 (2009) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment).

Given this limitation, Congress cannot pre-empt a state law merely by promulgating a conflicting statute—the pre-empting statute must also be constitutional, both on its face and as applied. As relevant here, if Congress lacks authority to enact a law regulating a particular intrastate activity, it follows that Congress also lacks authority to pre-empt state laws regulating that activity. See U. S. Const., Amdt. 10 (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”).

In this case, the Court concludes that “ [s]ection 14501(c)(1) . . . preempts the placard and parking provisions of the Port’s concession agreement.” Ante, at 655, 186 L. Ed. 2d, at 188. Although respondents waived any argument that Congress lacks authority to regulate the placards and parking arrangements of drayage trucks it is difficult to say that placards and parking arrangements substantially affect interstate commerce. Congress made no findings indicating that offsite parking—conduct that falls within the scope of the States’ traditional police powers—substantially affects interstate commerce. And I doubt that it could. Nevertheless, because respondents did not preserve a constitutional challenge to the FAAAA and because I agree that the provisions in question have the “force and effect of law,” I join the Court’s opinion.