Regional transmission organizations ("RTOs") operate the interstate electricity grid independently, to foster competition, improve reliability, and lower prices. Congress in the Federal Power Act ("FPA") mandated that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") "shall have jurisdiction over all facilities for [interstate] transmission," 16 U.S.C. § 824(b)(1), and that RTO membership remain "voluntary," id. § 824a(a). Congress also directed FERC to provide incentives "to each ... utility that joins" an RTO. Id. § 824s(c). Petitioner committed to join an RTO, and Ohio then passed a law purporting to require membership. Below, the Sixth Circuit held that Ohio could mandate RTO membership. And it denied Petitioner an incentive by reading into the federal incentive statute a nontextual exclusion for utilities subject to a state RTO mandate. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Sixth Circuit correctly held that the FPA does not preempt Ohio's RTO mandate, where the grounds for Sixth Circuit's decision—that FERC lacks exclusive jurisdiction over interstate transmission facilities, and that Ohio's law primarily regulates intrastate transmission—conflict with decisions by the Third, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth and D.C. Circuits recognizing that FERC's jurisdiction is exclusive and with settled law that transmission facilities operating as part of the interstate grid (as Ohio's do) constitute interstate transmission.

2. Whether RTO mandates render utilities ineligible for incentives under 16 U.S.C. § 824s(c) (as the Sixth Circuit held) or not (as two FERC Chairmen found).

Whether the Sixth Circuit correctly held that the Federal Power Act does not preempt Ohio's RTO mandate and whether RTO mandates render utilities ineligible for federal incentives