Cite as: 539 U. S. 1 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
tions that sought relief only under state law. Avco Corp. v. Machinists, 390 U. S. 557 (1968). We later explained that holding as resting on the unusually "powerful" pre-emptive force of § 301:
"The Court of Appeals held, 376 F. 2d, at 340, and we affirmed, 390 U. S., at 560, that the petitioner's action 'arose under' § 301, and thus could be removed to federal court, although the petitioner had undoubtedly pleaded an adequate claim for relief under the state law of contracts and had sought a remedy available only under state law. The necessary ground of decision was that the pre-emptive force of § 301 is so powerful as to displace entirely any state cause of action 'for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization.' Any such suit is purely a creature of federal law, notwithstanding the fact that state law would provide a cause of action in the absence of § 301. Avco stands for the proposition that if a federal cause of action completely pre-empts a state cause of action any complaint that comes within the scope of the federal cause of action necessarily 'arises under' federal law." Franchise Tax Bd., 463 U. S., at 23-24 (footnote omitted).
Similarly, in Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 481 U. S. 58 (1987), we considered whether the "complete preemption" approach adopted in Avco also supported the removal of state common-law causes of action asserting improper processing of benefit claims under a plan regulated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. For two reasons, we held that removal was proper even though the complaint purported to raise only state-law claims. First, the statutory text in § 502(a), 29 U. S. C. § 1132, not only provided an express federal remedy for the plaintiffs' claims, but also in its jurisdiction subsection, § 502(f), used language similar to the statutory language construed in Avco, thereby indicating
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