Development in ERISA Preemption Battle Over Maryland Fair Share Health Care Fund Act

As many of you already know, the Retail Industry Leaders Association ("RILA") filed a challenge to Maryland's Fair Share Health Care Fund Act – the so-called Wal-Mart bill – in U.S. District Court last week. You can access the complaint…

As many of you already know, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (“RILA”) filed a challenge to Maryland’s Fair Share Health Care Fund Act — the so-called Wal-Mart bill — in U.S. District Court last week. You can access the complaint filed here. You can also access a web page here by RILA devoted to its opposition to state health care mandates as well as this document discussing their arguments in favor of ERISA preemption: “Legal Overview: Discriminatory Health Care Mandates.” Excerpt:

Union supporters also will argue that their proposed laws are not mandated health care laws because they give employers the ?choice? whether to pay money to the state or for increased employee health coverage. But paying the state is no choice at all?it is a penalty?because no employer would ?choose? to write a check to the state for which it received nothing in return. The Supreme Court made essentially the same point when it indicated there would be preemption for ?a state law whose economic effects, intentionally or otherwise, were so acute ?as to force an ERISA plan to adopt a certain scheme of substantive coverage.?? DeBuono v.
NYSA-ILA Med. & Clinical Servs. Fund, 520 U.S. 806, 816 n.16 (1997)
. In the words of the Supreme Court, this is ?a Hobson?s choice? prohibited by ERISA. Travelers, 514 U.S. at 664.

The Workforce Prof Blog has comments here regarding the litigation.

See a previous post here at Benefitsblog discussing the legal debate over the legislation.

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