Court Opinion

ID: 9489087
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:05:21.671376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:18.782197
License: Public Domain

KING, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that ERISA does not preempt the provisions of the Louisiana community property law that would operate here to divest a participant’s widow of a portion of the benefits from pension plans that she would be entitled to receive under ERISA in favor of the heirs of his predeceased spouse. It defies reality to say that the widow’s rights under ERISA have only been “tenuously, remotely or peripherally” affected by Louisiana law. They have been gutted. I recognize that the preemption issue is conceptually as difficult as the bottom line is easy. But I am persuaded that the Ninth Circuit in Ablamis v. Roper, 937 F.2d 1450 (9th Cir.1991), and the Department of Labor in DOL Advisory Opinion #9(M6A (December 4, 1990) and in its excellent amicus brief submitted at our request have the better arguments. ERISA was enacted to protect the living— plan participants and their dependents — and it was amended in 1984 to protect divorced spouses of plan participants. Key objectives of the statute were to establish uniformity in the law nationwide and certainty in its application, objectives that are implemented in part by its preemption provision. Today’s decision will create great uncertainty in the principal tenet of the statute that Congress strived to make certain: that a plan participant and his or her spouse will actually receive their anticipated retirement income.