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degree of pre-emption that no sensible person could have intended—which it is not.
I think it would greatly assist our function of clarifying the law if we simply acknowledged that our first take on this statute was wrong; that the "relate to" clause of the pre-emption provision is meant, not to set forth a test for pre-emption, but rather to identify the field in which ordinary field pre-emption applies—namely, the field of laws regulating "employee benefit plan[s] described in section 1003(a) of this title and not exempt under section 1003(b) of this title," 29 U. S. C. § 1144(a). Our new approach to ERISA pre-emption is set forth in John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Harris Trust and Sav. Bank, 510 U. S. 86, 99 (1993): "[W]e discern no solid basis for believing that Congress, when it designed ERISA, intended fundamentally to alter traditional pre-emption analysis." I think it accurately describes our current ERISA jurisprudence to say that we apply ordinary field pre-emption, and, of course, ordinary conflict preemption. See generally Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U. S. 238, 248 (1984) (explaining general principles of field and conflict pre-emption); Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947) (field pre-emption); Florida Lime & Avocado Growers, Inc. v. Paul, 373 U. S. 132, 142-143 (1963) (conflict pre-emption). Nothing more mysterious than that; and except as establishing that, "relates to" is irrelevant.
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