The Maryland attorney general said he would appeal a federal district court judge?s decision Wednesday striking down a state law requiring big companies to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on employee health care benefits.
“We argued to the court [that] Supreme Court precedent makes it clear that this law does not impermissibly impact health benefit plans,” the attorney general?s office said in a written statement. “Employers may choose to pay the tax or avoid paying the tax in several ways.”
Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich compared the court ruling in the Wal-Mart case to recent petition drives against early voting and lawsuits challenging energy rate increases ? issues championed by Democrats.
“There?s a trend here, and it?s overreaching,” Ehrlich said. “Fortunately in this state, we have the people of Maryland and the courts to combat and in many cases negate this overreaching by [Senate President Thomas] Mike Miller and [House Speaker] Mike Busch.”
The state has 30 days to challenge U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, who ruled that the Maryland Fair Share Health Care Fund Act, also known as the Wal-Mart bill, was unfair to the retail giant because the law required the company to follow different rules in Maryland than in other states.
Motz cited the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which he said pre-empts “any and all state laws insofar as they may now or here after relate to any employee benefit plan.”
The Wal-Mart bill, which passed the Democratic-controlled General Assembly by wide margins in 2004, applied to companies with more than 10,000 employees. A company faced heavy fines ? an estimated $6 million per year ? if it chose not to pay for benefits.
Wal-Mart has 53 stores and two distribution centers in Maryland, and employs nearly 16,000 people in the state.
Miller called the ruling “a pebble in the path of what we?re trying to accomplish.”
“This is an Arkansas corporation that takes the profits of the state of Maryland and doesn?t give the same access to health care that our local companies do,” Miller said. “We cannot continue to allow these children of Wal-Mart employees to go without health care in the state of Maryland. We?re going to keep going until we get this thing right.”
Busch said that without the bill workers would see “a slow erosion of large corporations providing benefits.”
? The Associated Press contributed to this report.
