New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U.S. 645, 11 (1995)

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Cite as: 514 U. S. 645 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 746 (1981). Indeed, in cases like this one, where federal law is said to bar state action in fields of traditional state regulation, see Hillsborough County v. Automated Medical Laboratories, Inc., 471 U. S. 707, 719 (1985), we have worked on the "assumption that the historic police powers of the States were not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress." Rice, supra, at 230. See, e. g., Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504, 516 (1992); id., at 532-533 (Blackmun, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part); Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724, 740 (1985); Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519 (1977); Napier v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 272 U. S. 605, 611 (1926).

Since pre-emption claims turn on Congress's intent, Cipol-lone, supra, at 516; Shaw, supra, at 95, we begin as we do in any exercise of statutory construction with the text of the provision in question, and move on, as need be, to the structure and purpose of the Act in which it occurs. See, e. g., Ingersoll-Rand, supra, at 138. The governing text of ERISA is clearly expansive. Section 514(a) marks for preemption "all state laws insofar as they . . . relate to any employee benefit plan" covered by ERISA, and one might be excused for wondering, at first blush, whether the words of limitation ("insofar as they . . . relate") do much limiting. If "relate to" were taken to extend to the furthest stretch of its indeterminacy, then for all practical purposes pre-emption would never run its course, for "[r]eally, universally, relations stop nowhere," H. James, Roderick Hudson xli (New York ed., World's Classics 1980). But that, of course, would be to read Congress's words of limitation as mere sham, and to read the presumption against pre-emption out of the law whenever Congress speaks to the matter with generality. That said, we have to recognize that our prior attempt to construe the phrase "relate to" does not give us much help drawing the line here.

655

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