## Facts

- OSHA, under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and SARA, promulgated federal training standards for workers handling hazardous waste.
- Illinois enacted two statutes requiring certain hazardous-waste laborers and crane/hoisting operators to obtain state licenses based on specified training, testing, and (for some operators) experience requirements.
- The Illinois licensing requirements substantially overlapped with federal OSHA hazardous-waste training requirements (including hours of training and annual refreshers) and operated as conditions of employment in designated hazardous-waste occupations.
- A trade association representing hazardous-waste management businesses sought to enjoin enforcement of the Illinois statutes as preempted by federal law.
- The district court largely rejected preemption because the statutes also aimed at public safety; the Seventh Circuit concluded the OSH Act broadly preempts unapproved state occupational standards and the Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the Illinois licensing statutes were “occupational safety and health standards” within the meaning of the OSH Act.
2. Whether, given existing federal OSHA standards on hazardous-waste worker training and Illinois’s lack of an approved state plan under OSH Act § 18(b), the Illinois statutes were preempted.

## Decision

- The Court affirmed the judgment that the Illinois licensing requirements were preempted to the extent they functioned as occupational safety and health standards on an issue covered by federal OSHA standards.
- A state requirement that “directly, substantially, and specifically” regulates occupational safety and health qualifies as an occupational safety and health standard even if it also serves a nonoccupational purpose such as public safety.
- Because OSHA had promulgated standards governing hazardous-waste worker training, Illinois could regulate the same issue only through an approved state plan under OSH Act § 18(b); Illinois had not obtained such approval.
- The Court distinguished generally applicable public-safety laws (e.g., traffic, fire, and building regulations) that regulate workers as members of the public, which ordinarily are not preempted on this rationale.

## Legal Principles

- Under the OSH Act, when a federal occupational safety and health standard is “in effect” on a particular issue, a State may not enforce its own occupational safety and health standard on that issue unless it proceeds under an approved state plan pursuant to § 18(b).
- Whether a state law is an occupational safety and health standard depends on its operative effect, not only the legislature’s stated purpose; targeted requirements conditioning work in hazardous occupations on specified training/testing are occupational standards.
- Allowing unapproved state occupational standards to supplement federal OSHA standards can be preempted as an obstacle to Congress’s plan for uniform regulation within each State—either federal standards alone or an approved comprehensive state program.
- State laws of general applicability that regulate workers as part of the general public, rather than directly and specifically regulating occupational conditions, are less likely to be preempted under the OSH Act framework.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Illinois’s hazardous-waste worker licensing and training statutes operated as occupational safety and health standards addressing the same issue as existing OSHA standards and were therefore preempted absent an approved state plan under OSH Act § 18(b).


Gade v. Nat’l Solid Wastes Mgmt. Ass’n, 505 U.S. 88 (1992)