Fednav, Ltd. v. Chester

Ballast water, the water taken on by ships for stability and maintenance, sometimes contained aquatic nuisance species (ANS). Ballast water taken on by ships in foreign harbors and released in United States waterways without predators of ANS caused significant ecological and economic damage. To prevent the introduction and spread of ANS, Congress passed the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention Control Act (NANPCA) in 1990, updated as the National Invasive Species Act (NISA) in 1996. NANPCA and NISA established ANS prevention and control programs and required the Coast Guard to adopt and enforce ballast-water regulations. Additionally, NISA created a Great Lakes panel of state and local representatives that were charged with coordinating ANS prevention and control measures and a federal task force that was charged with reviewing ANS prevention and control measures voluntarily submitted by states. Although the Coast Guard adopted ballast-water regulations, the regulations did not apply to vessels that declared to have no ballast on board (NOBOB), even though residual sediment in NOBOB-ships sometimes contained ANS. To address unregulated NOBOB vessels, Michigan amended state environmental statutes to establish a permit requirement for all oceangoing vessels using Michigan ports (the state statute). Among the permit requirements, vessels entering Michigan ports had to report ballast-water management practices. A group of shipping companies, associations, and workers (the shipping groups) (plaintiffs) challenged the state statute, arguing that the statute was implicitly preempted by NANPCA and NISA through field and conflict preemption. The district court found that a NISA clause declaring that the act was not intended to prevent state ANS-control measures (the savings clause), prevented federal preemption and upheld the state statue. The shipping groups appealed.