The Relationship Between ERISA, State and Local Health Care Experimentation, and the Passage of National Health Care Reform

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) provides a comprehensive federal scheme for the regulation of employee benefit plans, which include employee welfare benefit plans.Under Section 514(a) of ERISA, any state law that relates to employee benefit plans is preempted by ERISA.Judicial decisions have generally interpreted the scope of ERISA preemption to be fairly expansive; however, some recent decisions have narrowed the scope of Section 514(a) to some degree.Nonetheless, ERISA's preemption clause continues to significantly limit state and local efforts at health care reform.Several states and localities have experimented with fair share laws, which seek to increase access to health care and provide a means by which to finance such expansion.Employer spending mandates under such laws have been subject to legal challenges as expressly preempted by ERISA.To date, only San Francisco's fair share law has survived an ERISA challenge.More importantly, the debate over the relationship between ERISA preemption and fair share laws implicates significant issues with respect to health care reform at the local, state, and national levels.The U.S. Supreme Court should grant certiorari in this matter in order to clarify the boundaries of health care reform within which state and local governments can safely operate without conflicting with ERISA.Even with the enactment of national health care reform, if the Supreme Court decides not to hear Golden Gate Restaurant Ass'n v. City & County of San Francisco,' Congress should consider amending ERISA (1) to enable state and local governments to continue