Quiet Story of the Week: Maryland Abandons Wal-Mart Law Appeal

Of course there were many other newsmaking events this week, but the relatively silent treatment this story received from Old Media is still not a surprise (the link is to a story at a trade publication's web site; very few papers had a related story written by the Associated Press):

Maryland Abandons ‘Fair Share’ Health Care Fight

Maryland is giving up on its effort to require Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to spend more money on employees’ health insurance benefits.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler said Monday, April 16, that the state will not seek U.S. Supreme Court review of an appeals court decision earlier this year—upholding a lower court ruling—that the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act pre-empted the Maryland law.

“The reason we are not seeking review is not because we think the law is unconstitutional. What the courts found was that the law was pre-empted by a very broad federal law called ERISA. We believe that seeking further review would not be successful,” Gansler said in a statement.

Mr. Gansler must have been absent the day in law school where he would have learned that because ERISA is constitutional, a state law that violates ERISA isn't.

Now that what was a cause celebre has been decisively thwarted, Old Media, in typical fashion, as shown in this Google News search, gave it relatively little play.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.