Law Commons^™

Threading The Eye Of The Erisa Needle: Erisa Preemption And Alternative Legal Schemes To Fill The Regulatory Vacuum,, Bernard D. Reams Jr., Michael P. Forrest

Faculty Articles

Popular consensus suggests that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) is a mess, and one of historic proportions. ERISA’s comprehensive reach to protect employer-provided benefits has in practice produced unintended, if not contradictory, results.

Congress passed ERISA over thirty years ago to protect the rights of employees who benefit from employer pension and welfare benefit plans. It did so with a series of regulations that promote uniformity in litigation across the various states through “strong preemption language.” The goal of uniformity arguably benefits workers by imposing regular standards of conduct which lend predictability to the scope of litigation, or …