ERISA will be overruled---state litigation ensures it.
Michael S. Spaerer 19, Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, November 2019, “States as Policy Laboratories: The Politics of State-Based Single-Payer Proposals,” Am J Public Health, 109(11), doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305294
Richard Gottfried, the legislative sponsor of the single-payer proposal in New York, dismisses the ERISA challenge as unlikely to succeed, noting that (1) the state has clear authority to impose payroll taxes; (2) the proposed law does not require any firm to provide coverage but, in fact, does just the opposite, relieving firms of any such obligation; and (3) firms could still maintain their employer-based coverage, although it would be irrational for them to do so because they also would be contributing to the cost of the single-payer program.6 There is no clear precedent suggesting how the courts would rule in the inevitable ERISA challenge to a state-based single-payer initiative. It is quite likely, however, that the litigation would drag on for years, complicating at a minimum any effort to implement such a program.