Catherine Stouffer, et al. v. Union Pacific Railroad Company

A Union Pacific train crashed into a parade honoring wounded war veterans, and killed four of the veterans. The railroad-crossing’s warning system had provided the parade only 20.4 seconds warning, despite the railroad’s agreement with the State of Texas to provide 30 seconds warning. The governing “State-railroad agreement” mandated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), 23 C.F.R. 646.216(d)(1), included a Stateapproved 30-second warning-time design. But months before the crash, Union Pacific reduced the crossing’s timer by ten seconds without approval. A State law action against a railroad is not preempted if the railroad violates a federal standard of care. 49 U.S.C. 20106(b)(1)(a). The veterans’ survivors alleged that Union Pacific violated 49 C.F.R. 234.225, a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulation that required Union Pacific to “maintain” the warning system “to activate in accordance” with its “design,” but “in no event [to] provide less than 20 seconds warning….” But the court below held plaintiffs’ action preempted, concluding that the FRA’s 20-second minimum warning time “supplanted” the FHWA-mandated agreement’s 30- second design, and, therefore, only 20 seconds of warning was enforceable. App., infra, 13a. In so holding, the court below deferred to its understanding of the FRA’s interpretation of the 20- second minimum warning-time regulation. But the court applied none of this Court’s prerequisites for granting such blanket deference to an agency, disregarding 49 C.F.R. 234.225’s text, structure, history, and purpose. Kisor v. Wilkie, 139 S.Ct. 2400, 2414–18 (2019). The questions presented are: Should this Court grant, vacate, and remand because the court below did not interpret 49 C.F.R. 234.225 in the manner that Kisor requires? Should FRA regulations be interpreted in concert with FHWA regulations to enforce safety standards in “State-railroad agreements,” rather than “supplant” them?