516
Kennedy, J., dissenting
to limit their reach in this way. Indeed while we have had numerous opportunities to examine and to apply the McCarran-Ferguson Act in different contexts, we have never hinted that the meaning of the phrase "business of insurance" changed whether we addressed laws "enacted for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance" or activities of insurers constituting the "business of insurance." Further, the suggestion that Pireno's three-tier test has application only in antitrust cases is discredited by our decisions citing the Pireno test in contexts unrelated to antitrust. For instance, we have employed the Pireno test to determine whether certain state laws fall within the pre-emption saving clause of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. See Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U. S. 41, 48-49 (1987); Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724, 742-743 (1985).
Royal Drug and Pireno are best viewed as refinements of this Court's analysis in National Securities, tailored to address activities of insurance companies that would implicate the federal antitrust laws were it not for the McCarran-Ferguson Act. Although these cases were decided in accordance with the rule that exemptions from the antitrust laws are to be construed narrowly, see Pireno, 458 U. S., at 126; Royal Drug, 440 U. S., at 231, I see no reason why general principles derived from them are not applicable to any case involving the scope of the term "business of insurance" under the McCarran-Ferguson Act.
An examination of Pireno and Royal Drug reveals that those decisions merely expand upon the statements we made about the business of insurance in National Securities. In National Securities, we determined that the essence of the business of insurance involves those activities central to the relationship between the insurer and the insured. 393 U. S., at 460. Pireno reiterates that principle and identifies three factors which shed light on the task of determining whether a particular activity has the requisite connection to the
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