In the case of El Paso Natural Gas Company v. Laura Neztsosie, 1998, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that federal law preempts state-law claims for public liability actions arising from nuclear incidents. The Navajo Nation residents filed a lawsuit against El Paso Natural Gas and other companies involved in uranium mining on their reservation, alleging they suffered health problems due to radiation exposure. However, under the Price-Anderson Act - a federal law governing liability issues related to nuclear accidents - such lawsuits must be heard in federal court rather than state courts where they were initially filed. Furthermore, this act requires all public-liability claims resulting from 'nuclear incidents' to follow specific procedures which include initial filing with a United States district court regardless of whether or not it is eventually determined that such an incident has occurred. Therefore, the Supreme Court held that these cases should have been brought before a Federal District Court first instead of directly going through State Courts.

In the dissenting opinion for El Paso Natural Gas Company v. Neztsosie, Justice Ginsburg argued that the majority's interpretation of the Price-Anderson Act was incorrect and overly broad. She contended that while Congress intended to centralize nuclear incident litigation in federal court, it did not intend to bar state courts from hearing cases involving public liability actions until such time as they were removed to a federal court. In her view, this misinterpretation led to an unnecessary preemption of state law and jurisdictional rules which could potentially disrupt other areas of law beyond those directly related to nuclear incidents. Furthermore, she expressed concern over how this ruling might impact Native American tribal sovereignty by limiting their ability to adjudicate disputes within their own judicial systems.