Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council
The Court struck down a Massachusetts law that barred state agencies from buying goods or services from companies doing business with Burma, ruling that it conflicted with a federal Burma sanctions law and interfered with the President's authority over foreign affairs.
The decision reinforces that when Congress gives the President carefully calibrated and flexible power to manage foreign sanctions, states cannot impose their own, stricter rules that undercut that flexibility or the nation's ability to speak with one voice abroad.
“Quite simply, if the Massachusetts law is enforceable the President has less to offer and less economic and diplomatic leverage as a consequence.”
Explaining how the state law weakened the President's bargaining power over Burma sanctions.
How it got here: A federal trial court and the First Circuit both ruled against Massachusetts on multiple grounds; the State asked the Supreme Court to review the decision.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Massachusetts enacted a law barring its state agencies from purchasing goods or services from companies doing business with Burma's military government, with limited exceptions. Three months later, Congress passed its own federal Burma sanctions law, giving the President calibrated and flexible authority to impose, adjust, or waive sanctions against Burma while pursuing a multilateral diplomatic strategy with U.S. allies.
The question before the Court
Could Massachusetts refuse to let its state agencies buy goods and services from companies doing business with Burma, when Congress had already passed its own federal sanctions law targeting Burma?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that Massachusetts could not enforce its Burma purchasing restrictions once Congress had passed its own Burma sanctions law, because the state law stood as an obstacle to what Congress and the President were trying to accomplish. The federal law gave the President flexible, carefully limited authority to impose, lift, or waive sanctions depending on conditions in Burma and national security concerns, and it deliberately excluded certain kinds of business dealings from any ban.
Massachusetts's law swept more broadly and applied permanently, with no comparable flexibility, undercutting the President's leverage in dealing with Burma and interfering with his efforts to build a coordinated, multilateral strategy with U.S. allies. Because the state law frustrated these specific federal objectives, it had to give way under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which makes valid federal law override conflicting state law.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
State and local governments that had passed their own sanctions laws against foreign regimes—modeled on earlier anti-apartheid measures—now face real limits on that practice whenever Congress has already legislated in the same area. The ruling protects the President's ability to use sanctions as a bargaining tool in diplomacy without competing, uncoordinated pressure from individual states.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, and the Court's judgment affirming the lower courts' injunction against Massachusetts's Burma law stands. Because the Court resolved the case on preemption grounds, it did not reach the First Circuit's separate rulings on the foreign affairs power or the dormant Foreign Commerce Clause, leaving those broader questions unresolved for future cases involving other state or local sanctions laws.
What this does not decide
The Court decided the case only on the ground that the state law conflicted with the specific federal Burma statute; it expressly declined to rule on whether the law also violated the foreign affairs power or the dormant Foreign Commerce Clause, issues the lower court had also addressed.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Scalia
Justice Scalia agreed the Massachusetts law was preempted but argued the majority's extensive reliance on legislative history—statements by individual senators, executive branch letters, and rejected bills—was unnecessary and harmful. He argued the statute's text alone made the outcome obvious, and that relying on legislative history invites costly, unreliable litigation over materials that do not reflect what Congress as a whole actually intended.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied conflict preemption, the rule that state law must give way when it stands as an obstacle to the full purposes and objectives Congress adopted in a federal statute, even without an express provision requiring preemption.
- It examined the federal Burma sanctions law as a whole and found that Congress deliberately gave the President broad, flexible discretion to impose, terminate, or waive sanctions based on his own findings about Burma's human rights record and national security concerns.
- Because the state law imposed its own permanent, inflexible restrictions with no comparable waiver mechanism, the Court found it undermined the President's statutory authority to calibrate economic pressure on Burma as circumstances changed.
- The Court also found that the state law swept in companies and transactions—such as pre-existing investments and dealings by foreign companies—that the federal law had deliberately excluded from any sanction, showing that Congress meant to limit sanctions to a specific, narrower range of conduct.
- Finally, the Court concluded that the state law undermined the President's exclusively national authority to negotiate a coordinated, multilateral strategy with U.S. allies, pointing to formal diplomatic protests, a World Trade Organization dispute, and repeated statements from Executive Branch officials describing real diplomatic friction caused by the state law.
- Having found the state law frustrated at least three distinct federal objectives, the Court concluded that it was preempted under the Supremacy Clause and did not need to separately decide whether the state law also violated the foreign affairs power or the Foreign Commerce Clause.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Hines v. Davidowitz (312 U.S. 52)
The Court relied on Hines's conflict-preemption standard as the governing test for finding the state law preempted.
Distinguishes Barclays Bank PLC v. Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. (512 U.S. 298)
The Court said Barclays' skepticism toward diplomatic-protest evidence didn't apply here because Congress hadn't rejected that evidence as it had there.