In a 6-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Vermontlaw that would've required health insurers to provide a variety ofinformation about claims to the state. The majority ruled that thefederal Employee Retirement Income Security Act(ERISA) prohibited the state’s action.

“ERISA expressly pre-empts ‘any and all State laws insofar asthey may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan,’”stated the opinion, authored by Chief Justice JohnRoberts.

The decision found that the preemption imposed by federal lawwas necessary to prevent duplicative reporting requirements thatcreate “administrative waste” and “threaten to subject plans towide-ranging liability.”

Vermont’s arguments in defense of its own rules were“unpersuasive,” the majority wrote. The state had argued that itsgoals in collecting the data were different from ERISA’s andtherefore not subject to federal preemption, but the court wrotethat that “does not transform Vermont’s direct regulation of afundamental ERISA function into an innocuous and peripheral set ofadditional rules.”

Furthermore, the court rejected the notion that thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act(PPACA) has undone ERISA’s preemption of state law.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, which has a self-insuredhealth plan that includes only 137 Vermont residents, brought thelawsuit against the state. However, it was a part of Blue CrossBlue Shield of Massachusetts, which included several thousandVermont residents in its network. After the state informed BlueCross that it had to report all claims on its Vermont members to astate agency or face a $2,000 a day penalty, Liberty Mutual sued infederal court.

The ruling, one of a series of decisions released on Tuesday,was supported by the court’s three remaining conservatives ––Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas –– as well as two of itsliberals, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, and Anthony Kennedy, whois often viewed as a swing vote. Sonia Sotomayor and RuthBader Ginsburg, part of the liberal wing, were the two dissentingvotes.

The rulings were the first released since the death ofJustice Antonin Scalia, which createda vacancy that President Obama is seeking to fill by nominating anew justice. Republicans who control the Senate have said they willnot confirm a new justice until a new president takes office nextyear.