Erie Insurance Co. sued Maryland insurance regulators in federal court on Thursday, charging them with inappropriately filing four “determination letters” in response to complaints that charged the insurer with racial and geographic discrimination.

In January 2021 and December 2021, four former and current Erie agencies filed administrative complaints with the Maryland Insurance Administration charging the commercial and personal lines insurer with discrimination, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore in Erie Insurance Exchange et al. v. The Maryland Insurance Administration; Kathleen A. Birrane Insurance Commissioner.  

The regulator informed the Erie, Pennsylvania-based insurer that it was exercising its statutory authority to open two separate administrative investigations of the allegations, the lawsuit said.

After what Erie described as limited communications from the regulator, in May 2023 the administration’s P&C division and the commissioner surprised Erie by issuing four public determination letters without completing a licensing investigation that it had previously determined was required, the lawsuit said.

The letters said the administration concluded that Erie terminated its agency agreements because they did not meet “unlawfully imposed” loss ratio requirements, and that the insurer had adopted loss ratio metrics “designed to target agencies writing business in urban areas and to reduce the volume of business being written in those areas.”

Erie said the letters “contain ‘findings’ based on non-existent Erie ‘failures’ to provide certain information to the MIA” that were “caused solely and exclusively by the MIA’s abrupt abandonment of its oft-repeated intent” to complete the licensing investigation.

Among other things, Erie alleged that the letter made public confidential business information.

The insurer said the insurance administration and commissioner rushed publication of the letters, based on an incomplete investigation, because “the businesses that had filed administrative discrimination complaints against Erie grew impatient of waiting for the Administration to complete the ‘thorough’ years-long investigation that the MIA had determined was required for the complex issues presented by the administration complaints.”

Erie is seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunctive relief barring further dissemination of its “confidential, privileged and protected information” in the determination letters, and a permanent mandatory injunction directing the administration and commissioner to withdraw the determination letters and a declaration the letters are unlawful.

Erie said in a statement: “We are deeply troubled by the claims made by these agents because we find discrimination of any kind abhorrent and inconsistent with the values that have guided our business for nearly 100 years.”

An administration spokesman said in a statement he cannot comment because the matter is in litigation.