WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The nation's highest court delivered state attorneys-general a major rebuff last week by slapping down their efforts to further regulate sales of cigarettes over the Internet.

In Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transport Assoc. (docket# 06-457) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Maine law forcing recipients of delivered cigarettes to prove they are over 18 broke federal law. Maine's case was supported by 31 other states.

The state argued that the laws were not covered by the federal restriction because it was aimed at citizens' health rather than interstate shipping. But the USSC ruled the Maine law, which among other things required recipients to show photo-ID, was pre-empted by federal restrictions over state laws covering motor delivery.

"The Maine law thereby produces the very effect that the federal law sought to avoid, namely, a State's direct substitution of its own governmental commands for 'competitive market forces' in determining (to a significant degree) the services that motor carriers will provide," wrote Justice Stephen Breyer in the unanimous opinion.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered a separate opinion urging Congress to alter the laws covering the motor-transort industry to allow such regulation.