The New Map: The Supreme Court's GuideTo Curing Thirty Years of Confusion inERISA Savings Clause Analysis

I. IntroductionImagine walking through a forest one afternoon in 1974. You come across a large cave and your curiosity coerces you to enter. As you walk through the cave, you realize that it contains a series of passageways and tunnels. Confident you will be able to find your way back, you decide to explore. In only a matter of minutes, however, you completely lose your way. For eleven years, you wander through the tunnels, but your efforts to get out seem hopeless. Finally, in 1985, you discover a map that appears to outline the entire tunnel system. Although the map helps you navigate the tunnels, you occasionally find tunnels that do not appear on the map. Each time you encounter a new tunnel, you draw it on the map. After several years, you have drawn so many new tunnels that your map has become illegible and your hopes dwindle.In 2003, you make a startling discovery-you find a new map. You are convinced that this map, which is simpler and less confusing than the old one, will end your confusion and lead you out of the labyrinth. In order to succeed, however, you must be careful to make sure you correctly interpret the map as the drafter intended. If not, the confusion of the labyrinth will continue and you will remain lost without hope.This Note will explain why the above situation is similar to the problem that lower courts face when trying to analyze the Insurance Savings Clause of the Employee Retirement Income security Act (ERISA). The Insurance Savings Clause is an exception to ERISA preemption that "saves" state laws dealing with insurance from preemption. Since ERISA's passage in 1974, courts have been lost trying to interpret the meaning and scope of this clause.This Note proceeds in four stages. Part II provides a brief background on general ERISA preemption and the purposes of the Insurance Savings Clause.1 Part III introduces Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Massachusetts,2 which outlines the Supreme Court's original map for Insurance Savings Clause analysis." This Part then analyzes how courts applied the original map following the Metropolitan Life decision in 1985.4 Two years after Metropolitan Life, in Pilot Life Insurance Co. v. Dedeaux,5 the Court tried to define the boundaries of the map to make the analysis easier; however, this confused lower courts more than it helped.6 Pilot Life will be discussed in Part III.7 To clear up the confusion in the lower courts, the Supreme Court tried to simplify the map in 1999 and 2002 in UNUM Life Insurance Co. of America v. Ward8 and Rush Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran9 respectively, both of which will be explained in Part III.10The Supreme Court's effort to alleviate the confusion of the old map proved unsuccessful, which caused the Court to throw the map away and create a new map in Kentucky Association of Health Plans, Inc. v. Miller.11 Part IV of the Note examines the new map in detail.12 Part V then explains that if lower courts correctly follow the new test, they may be able to alleviate the confusion that has existed in interpreting the Insurance Savings Clause for the past thirty years.13 This Note, however, will assert that lower courts are not following the map as its cartographers intended.14 It will explain that for the new map to be productive, courts must first recognize that it is different from the old map.15 This Note also will argue in Part V that courts must realize that the new map was intended to make the Insurance Savings Clause stronger than it had been posi-Pilot Life.16 Part V will stress that if lower courts do not recognize that the new map is different than the old map and that it was intended to make the Insurance Savings Clause stronger, then confusion will continue in Insurance Savings Clause analysis and lower courts will remain lost.17 Finally, this Note will provide lower courts with a compass to help them interpret and follow the map provided by the Supreme Court's decision in Miller.18II. …