J. Gabriel McGlamery

Abstract

This casenote explores the reasons why industrial life insurance—and the use of racial discrimination within it—disappeared. It reviews the history of industrial life insurance and the problems it posed, including discriminatory underwriting practices. The 2005 case Guidry v. Pellerin Life Insurance Company, although a minor lawsuit, is the only industrial life insurance case to address directly the use of race in underwriting. While the Guidry court held that no rule, law, or statute prohibits a life insurer from using race as an underwriting criterion, the decision is best understood as a provocative artifact, given that industrial life insurance had already effectively died out. The casenote evaluates several theories explaining this decline, including legislation barring the use of race in underwriting, social pressure discouraging racial discrimination, the narrowing of the racial mortality gap, and the growth of group life insurance. It concludes that no single theory is sufficient on its own, but collectively they provide insight into why industrial life insurance ultimately disappeared.

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