Rehnquist Calls ERISA Cases “Dreary”

This article–“Court Aces“–by Tony Mauro at Findlaw.com gives an interesting inside view of what U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist thinks of ERISA cases. The article quotes Rehnquist as saying, “The thing that stands out about them is that they’re dreary.” The comments came in his annual talk to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently in which he spotlighted the little-noticed decisions of the term. One he picked out was Kentucky Association of Health Plans v. Miller, which held that Kentucky’s “any willing provider” law affecting HMOs was pre-empted by ERISA. You can read about the case in posts at Benefitsblog here, here, and here.