Cite as: 514 U. S. 645 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
the tailoring of plans and employer conduct to the peculiarities of the law of each jurisdiction." Ingersoll-Rand, 498 U. S., at 142.
This objective was described in the House of Representatives by a sponsor of the Act, Representative Dent, as being to "eliminat[e] the threat of conflicting and inconsistent State and local regulation." 120 Cong. Rec. 29197 (1974). Senator Williams made the same point, that "with the narrow exceptions specified in the bill, the substantive and enforcement provisions . . . are intended to preempt the field for Federal regulations, thus eliminating the threat of conflicting or inconsistent State and local regulation of employee benefit plans." Id., at 29933. The basic thrust of the pre-emption clause, then, was to avoid a multiplicity of regulation in order to permit the nationally uniform administration of employee benefit plans.
Accordingly in Shaw, for example, we had no trouble finding that New York's "Human Rights Law, which prohibit[ed] employers from structuring their employee benefit plans in a manner that discriminate[d] on the basis of pregnancy, and [New York's] Disability Benefits Law, which require[d] employers to pay employees specific benefits, clearly 'relate[d] to' benefit plans." 463 U. S., at 97. These mandates affecting coverage could have been honored only by varying the subjects of a plan's benefits whenever New York law might have applied, or by requiring every plan to provide all beneficiaries with a benefit demanded by New York law if New York law could have been said to require it for any one beneficiary. Similarly, Pennsylvania's law that prohibited "plans from . . . requiring reimbursement [from the beneficiary] in the event of recovery from a third party" related to employee benefit plans within the meaning of § 514(a). FMC Corp. v. Holliday, 498 U. S. 52, 60 (1990). The law "prohibit[ed] plans from being structured in a manner requiring reimbursement in the event of recovery from a third party" and "require[d] plan providers to calculate benefit levels in
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