This article discusses when a pension or welfare plan governed by ERISA must comply with state law reporting, record-keeping and disclosure mandates. Any such mandate directed at an ERISA plan, a plan participant or beneficiary, a plan sponsor or contributing employer, or a third party's interaction with an ERISA plan, would seem prima facie to relate to an ERISA plan. Thus, at first blush, any such mandate would appear to be preempted. However, this approach is obviously incorrect. It would preclude a state from compelling a pension plan or its participants from filing tax reports about benefit distributions. On the other hand, such plan mandates do not affect plan benefit structures or the administration of those structures other than requiring such reports, record-keeping, or disclosure, and imposing cost burdens on the plan. Thus, at second blush, all such mandates seem permissible. However, this approach is obviously incorrect. It would permit a state to compel plans to provide reports so that the state could regulate plan fiduciary conduct or to make large expenditures to generate and keep records with little utility. This article argues for a common sense approach. ERISA permits a state-law reporting or disclosure mandate directed at an ERISA plan, a plan participant or beneficiary, a plan sponsor or contributing employer, or a third party interacting with an ERISA plan, such as a service provider, that implements a state law that ERISA does not otherwise preempt, but only to the extent the mandate is needed for the effective administration of such state law. If ERISA preempted a mandate needed to implement a state law not otherwise preempted, the state law would in practice be preempted. The effective administration requirement prevents undue interference with ERISA's benefit protections other than the reporting, record-keeping and disclosure mandate. If the state mandate is generally applicable, rather than principally applicable to ERISA plans, there would be a rebuttable presumption that the mandate is so limited. ERISA preempts all other reporting and disclosure mandates directed at an ERISA plan, a plan participant or beneficiary, a plan sponsor or contributing employer, or a third party interacting with an ERISA plan, such as a third party administrator, even if the compliance burdens are slight. Preemption is unaffected by whether the mandate arises from a law that explicitly refers to ERISA. Plan sponsors must comply with all state-law mandates that ERISA does not preempt regardless of plan terms. On the other hand, plan administrators must comply with all state-law mandates with which plan terms require compliance. This approach recognizes that the preemption of a state-law reporting and disclosing mandates is determined by whether it unduly interferes with the other ERISA benefit protections. Thus, states may require employers to report their contributions to ERISA plans needed to show compliance with those prevailing wage laws that ERISA permits. Thus, state courts considering contract claims by a supplier to an ERISA plan may require the plan to respond to discovery requests with respect to the claim. Thus, states may require those plans subject to the QDRO rules to disclose, to an individual eligible to use a QDRO, the information that may be needed to have a state court prepare and issue a QDRO granting the individual plan benefit rights, but not other information that is not so needed. Thus, states may require ERISA plans to file reports and respond to audit request with respect to the healthcare, if any, they provide that the states may regulate. Thus, states may require ERISA health reimbursement plans, their insurers, or their third party administrators to report claims experience, including price data, if ERISA permits the states to assemble, maintain, and perhaps publicize, such a data base, but only to the extent the mandate is needed for the effective administration of the permitted activities
