A federal judge in Austin approved a settlement between the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and Texas-based University Village Memory Care over its treatment of Army National Guard Combat Medic Specialist Maria Opara. The suit alleged the facility demoted, or attempted to demote, Opara from her night shift supervisor position to a lower-paying one because she took leave to fulfill military orders, then terminated her when she refused the forced demotion. The settlement pays Opara $15,000 and requires the facility to update its USERRA policies and train every employee on them. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon emphasized that each step was independently unlawful, the demotion over her service and the termination for refusing it. Military leave policies deserve the same documentation discipline employers give FMLA.

Paul Dietch argues that the growth of pooled employer plans is changing who controls the relationship with retirement advisers. By his numbers, bundled arrangements have gone from about 40 percent of the PEP market toward half, retirement specialists now advise more than half of pooled plans while traditional wealth advisers hold less than a third, and winning the adviser can now mean winning the next ten plans that adviser brings. For employers considering a pooled plan, Dietch raises a practical question. Does its growing size primarily benefit employers, advisers or providers?

Comments closed October 5 on Notice 2026-48, the IRS’s framework for delivering the Saver’s Match, the Treasury-funded 50 percent match on the first $2,000 of retirement savings that replaces the Saver’s Credit, with deposits starting in 2028 for 2027 contributions. ERIC backs the registration path, which moves the money into a worker’s plan as an ordinary rollover, arguing it lets workers benefit without forcing plans to build new tracking systems or send employee data to the government, and it warns against an automatic match path that could require real-time eligibility feeds to the IRS. NAGDCA supports a conduit IRA, asks for clear Roth-conversion procedures without withholding at conversion, and wants final regulations promptly plus good-faith transition relief. The IRS has confirmed that plans won’t be required to accept the contributions at all, which may become its own design question for sponsors.

Democrats on House Education and Workforce introduced a three-bill retirement package. The Workers’ Retirement Savings Protection Act from Ranking Member Bobby Scott would extend ERISA fiduciary status to one-time advice, including rollover recommendations, reviving concepts from the vacated Retirement Security Rule in statutory form. The Employee and Retiree Access to Justice Act from Rep. DeSaulnier and Sen. Smith would make forced arbitration clauses, class action waivers and representation waivers unenforceable whether signed before or after a dispute, and would ban discretionary clauses outside multiemployer plans so benefit denials get a fresh look in court. The Protecting Workers’ Benefits Act would treat litigation recoveries as plan assets, add a participant incentive award of 0.5 to 1 percent of any recovery, and require consolidation of duplicative suits. The bills lay out House Democrats’ priorities, though their prospects in the current Congress are uncertain.

Vanguard’s How America Saves data show 51 percent of workers earning $150,000 or more hit the 401(k) contribution limit last year, down from 60 percent in 2018, and the share fell from 22 to 10 percent in the $100,000 to $149,999 band. Vanguard attributes part of the drop to mechanics, since higher limits and wage growth make the max harder to reach, but EBRI’s Craig Copeland describes a real behavioral shift. Some savers contribute enough to receive the full employer match, then direct additional savings to health savings accounts, Roth IRAs or brokerage accounts. Their reasons include tax diversification and, depending on the account and withdrawal, easier access to the money. Fidelity counts a record 769,000 401(k) millionaires, and while 97 percent of its plans now offer a Roth option, only about 19 percent of workers with access use it. Alicia Munnell supplies the counterweight, “We all need a little discipline and a little guardrails.”

is the deadline for most calendar-year retirement plans to document, in a formal amendment, the CARES, SECURE and SECURE 2.0 changes they’ve been operating under, from Roth catch-ups for high earners and long-term part-time eligibility through super catch-ups, higher RMD ages and the optional early-withdrawal provisions. Informal IRS guidance from September 16 suggests some SECURE 2.0 amendment deadlines may slip, but the firm still recommends documenting everything implemented as part of this year-end. The discretionary review is where the litigation lessons show up. The firm suggests forfeiture language that makes the allocation choice a plan-design decision rather than a fiduciary one, claims procedures with limitations and venue provisions, a look at arbitration language, and beneficiary procedures that answer what happens after a divorce or when a beneficiary dies before being paid.

A Harris Poll of 2,000 moderate-income adults finds 80 percent of Gen X and millennial savers think the economic rules that served older workers have changed, 63 percent expect Social Security to be depleted before they can draw it, and 85 percent want guaranteed income as a core 401(k) feature. The follow-through lags, though. Eighty-six percent of those familiar with annuities find them appealing, 53 percent find them too complex, and just 3 percent expect annuities to carry them in retirement. Athene, which sells annuities, commissioned the survey.

Morgan Lewis recaps Technical Update 26-1, which prospectively waives the reportable-events filing that fires when active participation drops below 80 percent of its start-of-year level, a report that has mostly burdened frozen plans with few actives while rarely telling PBGC anything it acts on. The firm’s emphasis falls on what the waiver doesn’t reach. Single-cause events like reorganizations, shutdowns, mass layoffs and early retirement windows remain reportable, as do controlled-group changes and loan defaults. The waiver runs until a final rule amends the regulation.

The funded ratio of the Milliman 100 companies’ pension plans jumped to 114.5 percent as of September 30, from 112.2 percent a month earlier, putting the aggregate surplus at $160 billion. Higher interest rates drove the improvement. The rate used to value future pension payments rose from 6 percent to 6.47 percent, a level last seen in May 2009, reducing the estimated obligations by $54 billion. That more than offset a 2.21 percent investment loss. Milliman’s baseline projection now has the ratio at 114.7 percent by year end and 115.5 percent by the end of 2027. The improvement depends heavily on interest rates. Falling rates could increase the value of those obligations again.

December 31 is the deadline for 2026 required minimum distributions, and this plain-English refresher has two details worth stealing for participant communications. First, the 1959 drafting glitch. SECURE 2.0 assigns people born that year to both age 73 and age 75, and until proposed regulations finalize the fix, the safe answer is 73. Second, the first-year trap. Waiting until April 1 to take a first RMD means two taxable RMDs land in the same year. On inherited accounts, beneficiaries under the 10-year rule generally owe annual withdrawals in years one through nine only when the original owner died on or after his required beginning date, and the IRS’s penalty waiver for those missed annual withdrawals ended after 2024. The missed-RMD excise tax is 25 percent, dropping to 10 with prompt correction.

Non-grandfathered group health plans have been living with expanded breast cancer screening requirements since plan years beginning on or after December 20, 2025, which for calendar-year plans meant this past January. Under HRSA’s updated women’s preventive services guidelines, follow-up imaging and pathology needed to complete a screening that starts with a mammogram, including MRIs, ultrasounds and biopsies, must be covered in-network without cost sharing, and plans must provide individualized patient navigation for breast and cervical cancer screening, person-to-person help spanning assessment, system navigation, referrals and education. Covering these services before the deductible doesn’t prevent otherwise eligible employees from contributing to a health savings account. Check that insurers and claims administrators are processing the follow-up services as preventive care, and that plan summaries explain the coverage.

Governor Newsom signed most of the session’s employment bills and vetoed AB 1940, which would have added perimenopause, menopause and related conditions to FEHA’s definition of sex; a companion trigger provision in AB 2563 stays dormant as a result. For benefits and leave practitioners the headline is SB 1149, which extends California’s five days of job-protected bereavement leave to one “designated person” of the employee’s choosing per 12-month period, beyond the current family definition. AB 1697’s fix to the stay-or-pay law, which pushes its restrictions to contracts signed on or after January 1, 2027 and adds exceptions, is already in effect. The AI cluster deserves attention on its own. SB 947 bars using an automated decision system as the sole basis for discipline or termination, AB 1883 bans emotion recognition and neural data collection in workplace surveillance, and SB 951 requires Cal/WARN notices to flag layoffs substantially caused by AI. Most provisions take effect January 1, 2027, with the automated-decision rules operative July 1, 2027.

After the enhanced premium tax credits expired, net premium payments in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces rose 58 percent on average, and 114 percent for those staying in the same plan. Enrollment among people who paid their premiums fell from 21.8 million to 19.2 million, the first drop in seven years, and insurers are seeking a median 15 percent increase for 2027 while citing a deteriorating risk pool. CBO puts the combined uninsured increase from the reconciliation law and the credit expiry above 14 million by 2034. The increases matter for workers comparing COBRA with individual coverage and for part-time employees who aren’t eligible for employer coverage.

The Q3 Justworks and U.S. Chamber Small Business Index finds small-business owners believe in benefits, with 95 percent saying they boost productivity and 94 percent saying they aid retention, and 46 percent now offer health insurance, up from 41 percent last year. But 67 percent wish they had outside help offering benefits, and in companion Harris Poll research 49 percent worry their current package makes hiring and retention harder. Justworks’ David Feinberg calls it the Bene-Fit Gap, the distance between what employers want to provide and what employees actually need, and his advice runs toward right-sizing. Focus on benefits employees will use, educate year-round, and ask brokers about alternative coverage models, including arrangements that reimburse employees for coverage they buy themselves, for cost predictability.

Two additions in Emily Boyle’s wrap of the Anderson v. Intel argument go beyond the courtroom. The Labor Department’s pending fiduciary-prudence proposal would have fiduciaries designate a meaningful benchmark for each plan fund in advance, so sponsors may face the question the justices debated no matter how the case comes out. And Sanford Heisler’s Charles Field predicts the Court will define what a meaningful comparison requires and send the complaint back to the Ninth Circuit to apply that definition. The questioning focused on what makes an investment comparison meaningful. Justice Thomas pressed an apples-to-oranges framing, Justice Sotomayor asked the participants’ counsel how to pick the right kind of apple and drew the answer that it is “entirely context dependent,” and Justice Barrett asked Intel’s counsel whether the Court should simply answer yes or say what meaningful means.

Five former Wells Fargo employees allege that the company’s 401(k) fiduciaries kept three investments despite years of weak results, costing participants roughly $1.04 billion compared with the alternatives identified in their complaint. The targets are a custom large cap growth fund that trailed its disclosed index and four named peer funds on every standard measuring window from 2018 through 2025, a small cap fund the complaint says should have been removed at the end of 2022, and the State Street target date series the $58 billion plan adopted as its default investment in March 2023 despite a published record behind two of the three comparator series. To support each comparison, the plaintiffs match the funds on holdings, sector weights, risk and fees, and offer three benchmarks apiece, the fund’s own disclosed index, an investable index fund tracking it, and a set of peer funds. A separate count alleges the plan kept paying investment fees to an affiliated manager for fourteen months after Wells Fargo settled an earlier suit over the same plan for $32.5 million in 2022. Wells Fargo hasn’t yet responded in court.

In Klusmann v. AT&T Umbrella Benefit Plan No. 1, the claims administrator took its full 45-day extension, promised a decision by July 29, and issued it July 31. The missed deadline meant the judge reviewed the denial independently, without deferring to the administrator’s decision. The Northern District of Ohio held that the 2017 claims-procedure amendments displaced the Sixth Circuit’s old tolerance for late decisions, and that while a two-day miss was small, the administrator had everything it needed three weeks earlier and the scheduling lag was its own doing. Looking at the record fresh, the court treated the functional capacity evaluation and a neuropsychological report as objective medical evidence no physician in the record rebutted, observed that defense counsel’s arguments aren’t themselves medical evidence, and awarded benefits outright, retroactive to November 2023, rather than give the administrator a second chance. Claims teams should read this one next to their deadline calendars.

In Creason v. Elanco US Inc., a June decision of first impression under Indiana law, the Seventh Circuit held that an employee who accepts a roughly $84 weekly salary reduction in exchange for a fourth week of vacation has made a compensation bargain, not an assignment of wages, so Indiana’s wage-assignment formalities, written disclosures and a right to rescind, never applied. Nothing was withheld and routed to a third party; the agreed salary was simply lower, and the tax treatment matched. The court also enforced the employer’s pandemic-era rollover policy as written. Hours that the policy said would expire rather than pay out were a use-it-or-lose-it benefit, not withheld wages. The drafting lesson travels beyond Indiana. Say clearly what happens to unused time at year-end and at separation.

A Texas federal court ruled that an arbitration agreement’s exception for benefits claims did not cover an employee’s claim that he was fired to interfere with his benefits. In the September 28 Hawkins v. Wells Fargo order, the court distinguished a challenge to the firing from a demand for benefits owed under the plan, and it noted the plaintiff couldn’t cite a single case reading a comparable carve-out his way. The benefits claim itself stays in federal court, while the retaliation and disability discrimination claims head to arbitration.

NAPA covers the Erickson v. Lockton complaint, filed October 1 in the Western District of Missouri, the latest in a series of Capozzi Adler suits against employers that also broker their own voluntary benefits programs. The suits allege the same core facts. The employer, acting as its own broker, sets the commissions, paid upfront or spread over time, and the administration fee, so the premiums employees pay by payroll deduction reflect the broker’s own compensation choices. The complaint argues that collecting $3.3 million in commissions and fees from employee-paid premiums prevents the program from qualifying for the exemption that keeps voluntary benefits outside ERISA. Nevin Adams notes that Capozzi Adler has also sued Marsh & McLennan, USI Insurance Services and Arthur J. Gallagher over their voluntary benefits programs. The law firm separately represents participants challenging the target date funds in Lockton’s own 401(k) plan.

The Seventh Circuit upheld an Arkansas rule requiring health plans to disclose pharmacy compensation and cover dispensing fees when a pharmacy benefit manager or another intermediary underpays a pharmacy. The multiemployer fund behind Central States v. McClain, suing in Illinois federal court, argued that ERISA preempted the rule. The court concluded that the payment requirement regulates costs and that the reporting requirement does not intrude on the central administration of an employee benefit plan. Self-funded plans operating nationally now have one more state PBM rule the courts have let stand.

Rivkin Radler recaps East Coast Advanced Plastic Surgery v. Cigna, No. 25-2204, the September 17 decision in which the Second Circuit held that the No Surprises Act gives an out-of-network provider no private right of action to enforce awards from the independent dispute resolution process. The provider had won more than $3 million in awards that the statute says must be paid within 30 days, and sued when Cigna did not pay. The court concluded that Congress provided administrative enforcement but did not authorize providers to sue under the No Surprises Act itself to collect the awards. The awards remain valid, and CMS can still enforce them. Cigna’s separate allegation that the provider’s billing practices produced roughly $8.5 million in overpayments is still being litigated. The decision limits providers’ ability to use the No Surprises Act itself to collect unpaid awards in federal court.

Groom’s third whitepaper with Chubb maps two new fronts in litigation over mature employee stock ownership plans. One dispute concerns borrowing money within the company to finance a transaction involving the plan’s company shares. In Shipp v. Central States Manufacturing, participants claimed such a 2020 transaction, 2.2 million redeemed shares sold back to the plan through a $40 million, 30-year internal loan, diluted per-share value about 19 percent. The court granted the defendants summary judgment in March, treating the repurchase strategy as a corporate business decision rather than a fiduciary one and crediting the trustee’s modeling, advisors and independently negotiated price; no appeal followed. The second front attacks how mature plans invest the cash and other assets held alongside company stock, claiming the conservative allocations are imprudent and disloyal. Early results are mixed, and two cases have settled. The practical list for fiduciaries runs from pre-funding the repurchase obligation and documenting investment decisions for those accounts to periodic sustainability studies and checking that fiduciary coverage matches a class action that can cost millions to defend even in victory.

Judge Bryan sent Sam Lokensgard’s FMLA discrimination and Minnesota Parenting Leave Act claims to trial. Three weeks after telling his brand-new manager he’d need time off for his wife’s fertility appointments and eventually parental leave, the help desk engineer was fired for taking himself out of the call queue during team meetings, a practice the record shows the company tolerated for years without disciplining anyone. The court allowed the retaliation-related claims to proceed, finding that the timing and the company’s history of tolerating the same conduct could support a jury verdict for Lokensgard. The employer also argued the state parental-leave claim failed because no child had been born yet, and the court held the statute protects the request even before a child is conceived. The FMLA entitlement claim and the marital-status discrimination claims were dismissed.

Hall recaps Notice 2026-28, the Section 45S guidance implementing the budget law’s permanent extension of the paid family and medical leave credit. The useful operational detail is the new premium method. Employers insuring their paid leave can compute the credit from premiums rather than wages, whether or not anyone took leave that year, with blended premiums allocated between creditable and noncreditable coverage by any reasonable, consistently applied method supported by contemporaneous records. One leave event can’t claim both methods, though split funding can split the claim. State-mandated or state-paid leave counts toward eligibility but not toward the credit amount. Proposed regulations are coming.

The ISO rules that trip people up in practice, collected in one place. Incentive stock options can go only to employees of corporations, require stockholder approval within 12 months of plan adoption, and must be designated as ISOs at grant. Favorable tax treatment generally requires holding the shares for more than two years after grant and more than one year after exercise. The annual limit covers options first becoming exercisable on up to $100,000 of stock, measured at its value when granted. Employees owning more than 10 percent of the company’s voting power face additional restrictions, including a higher exercise price and a five-year maximum option term. And if employees will only exercise at an exit and sell immediately, the favorable tax treatment evaporates in the early sale anyway, so plain nonqualified options would have been simpler.

A 2008 change gave retirement-eligible Rhode Island state employees a choice. Retire by September 30 and keep generous retiree health coverage, or keep working toward a larger pension with less generous health coverage later. A new working paper from Laura Quinby and Gal Wettstein uses that moment to measure what the benefit is actually worth to workers. A $1,000 present-value cut in retiree health coverage raised the probability of retiring by the deadline by 0.6 percentage points, twice the effect of an equivalent dollar of pension wealth, and the reform tripled the retirement rate against the prior year. The researchers estimate that these older Rhode Island state employees valued an additional dollar of retiree health benefits at least twice as much as an additional dollar of pension benefits. The subjects are government workers, but the lesson travels to any employer with employees approaching 65. When older workers decide whether to retire, health coverage weighs more heavily than retirement money, so an employer trying to understand why they stay on, or weighing what would actually let them leave, should look at the bridge to Medicare before sweetening the retirement plan.