378
Opinion of the Court
California law rendered that policy provision ineffective, the Ninth Circuit appeared to conclude, because under the rule stated in Elfstrom v. New York Life Ins. Co., 67 Cal. 2d, at 512, 432 P. 2d, at 737, "the employer is the agent of the insurer in performing the duties of administering group insurance policies." Thus, the Ninth Circuit instructed that, on remand, if UNUM was found to have suffered actual preju-dice on account of Ward's late notice of claim, the District Court should then determine whether the claim was timely under Elfstrom. 135 F. 3d, at 1289.
Ward does not argue in this Court that the Elfstrom rule, as comprehended by the Ninth Circuit, is a law that "regulates insurance." See Brief for Respondent 35 (the Ninth Circuit applied "general principles of agency law," not a rule determining when "employers who administer insured plans are agents of the insurer as a matter of law"). Indeed, it is difficult to tell from the Court of Appeals opinion precisely what rule or principle that court derived from Elfstrom. See Brief for Respondent 35 ("[T]he court below did not actually apply the Elfstrom rule in this case."); 135 F. 3d, at 1283, and n. 6 (endorsing the reasoning of Paulson v. Western Life Ins. Co, 292 Ore. 38, 636 P. 2d 935 (1981), an Oregon Supreme Court decision that purported to reconcile Elf-strom with an apparently conflicting body of case law). Whatever the contours of Elfstrom may be, the Ninth Circuit held that the state law emerging from that case does not "relat[e] to" an ERISA plan within the meaning of § 1144(a), and therefore escapes preemption. See 135 F. 3d, at 1287.
In this determination, the Ninth Circuit was mistaken. The Court of Appeals stated, without elaboration, that Elf-strom does not dictate "the manner in which the plan will be administered," and therefore is consistent with this Court's ERISA preemption precedent. Ibid.; see New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U. S. 645, 657-658 (1995) (identifying among laws that "relat[e] to" employee benefit plans those that
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