Your editorial on the Dodd-Frank Act (“Don’t remove the financial crisis guardrail,’’ May 1) would have benefited from a more careful examination of the law. You said a judge’s decision to rescind MetLife’s designation as a systemically important financial institution “threatens to erode some of the legislation’s key protections.’’ Yet the right to ask a judge to review such designations by the government is part of the Dodd-Frank Act itself, specifically section 113(h). In seeking judicial review, MetLife was upholding the law, not undermining it.

Your editorial suggests that there is “more than enough’’ evidence to designate MetLife as a systemically important financial institution. This is precisely where a federal judge disagreed. In her ruling, she said that the Financial Stability Oversight Council “hardly adhered to any standard when it came to assessing MetLife’s threat to US financial stability.’’ The judge could not uphold a finding that MetLife’s distress would damage the broader economy when the oversight council “refused to undertake that analysis itself.’’

MetLife has been keeping its promises to customers since 1868, through wars, boom times, panics, and recessions. We came through the 2008 financial crisis in such strong shape that we could buy the international life insurance operations of AIG for $16 billion — money that AIG used to repay the taxpayers. A threat to financial stability? On the contrary, MetLife is a source of it.

Randy Clerihue

Corporate communications

MetLife Inc.

New York