Court Opinion

ID: 9430912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:52.994337+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:26.269288
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins, concurring.
I write separately only to note that today’s holding is a narrow one. The Court rejects the position, urged by respondent, that removal jurisdiction exists only when the complaint states a claim that is “obviously” pre-empted by state law— that is, when a federal statute has obviously pre-empted state law, or when a decision of this Court has construed an ambiguous federal statute to pre-empt state law. The Court instead focuses on the “intent of Congress,” ante, at 66, to make respondent’s cause of action removable to federal court. This intent to pre-empt became effective when ERISA became law. Consequently, although pre-emption was not obvious under respondent’s standard at the time of removal,* the District Court did in fact have jurisdiction over respondent’s pre-empted claim.
While I join the Court’s opinion, I note that our decision should not be interpreted as adopting a broad rule that any defense premised on congressional intent to pre-empt state law is sufficient to establish removal jurisdiction. The Court holds only that removal jurisdiction exists when, as here, *68“Congress has clearly manifested an intent to make causes of action . . . removable to federal court” Ibid, (emphasis added). In future cases involving other statutes, the prudent course for a federal court that does not find a clear congressional intent to create removal jurisdiction will be to remand the case to state court.

In the understated words of a prior ease which this Court repeats today, the pre-emption provisions of ERISA “ ‘perhaps are not a model of legislative drafting,’ ” Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, ante, at 46, quoting Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724, 739 (1985). Accordingly, before today’s decision in- Pilot Life, the answer to the question whether ERISA pre-empted state claims of the sort at issue here was not obvious.