BENEFITS DIGEST

The boards of 22 multiemployer plans, from foundry workers to food terminal employees, say the PBGC has kept them from applying for the special financial assistance Congress funded in the American Rescue Plan. Congress told the agency to process every application within 120 days; the funds say they have sat on a waitlist for more than a year without being allowed to file at all. The complaint also attacks the PBGC's position that terminated plans are ineligible, which the Second Circuit struck down in the Bakery Drivers case, now the subject of the agency's pending Supreme Court petition. The plans asked for a preliminary injunction and an expedited hearing the day they filed, and the docket has not slowed for the calendar. The court entered a scheduling order on Labor Day.

This week's roundup, a short-handed edition with no case of the week, flags two decisions as most notable. In Central States v. McClain the Seventh Circuit held that Arkansas's latest pharmacy benefit manager regulation survives ERISA preemption, and in Liu v. Kaiser the Ninth Circuit extended the substantial compliance doctrine to benefit elections. The edition also collects the week's decisions on arbitration, attorneys' fees, fiduciary breach, disability claims, preemption, exhaustion, and pleading.

The agency raised rates that pension plans and multiemployer plans use for valuation and funding purposes.

Roberts Disability Law walks through the Seventh Circuit's decision in Central States v. McClain, covered here yesterday from the slip opinion, affirming dismissal of the fund's ERISA preemption challenge to Arkansas Rule 128's pharmacy dispensing-fee and reporting requirements.

The Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of Central States' ERISA preemption challenge to Arkansas Insurance Rule 128, holding that the state's requirement that health plans pay pharmacies “fair and reasonable” dispensing fees is a cost regulation permitted under Rutledge, and that the rule's companion reporting mandate survives because it exists only to enforce that fee requirement, fitting the narrow room the Supreme Court's Gobeille decision leaves for state reporting duties. The panel flagged that ERISA's newly enacted uniform pharmacy-compensation reporting rules, effective for plan years beginning 30 months after February 3, 2026, may change the analysis later. For self-funded plans, the decision extends Rutledge's reach from reimbursement floors to state-mandated fees and data reporting.

Multiemployer plans' aggregate funded position reached 106 percent at midyear, a recent-history high. Healthier funds change the withdrawal-liability settlement calculus on both sides of the table.

In an unpublished memorandum, the Ninth Circuit affirmed an arbitration award holding that a multiemployer plan actuary's use of PBGC-published interest rate assumptions to calculate withdrawal liability violated ERISA's requirement that assumptions represent the actuary's best estimate of anticipated experience. The plan's 7 percent minimum funding rate applied instead. See The Second Thing above.

In City of Tacoma v. Western Metal Industry Pension Fund, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a funding-rate-based recalculation of withdrawal liability, another reminder that contesting multiemployer assessments remains an uphill battle.

On July 7, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) does not require multiemployer pension plans to use actuarial assumptions to calculate withdrawal liability adopted before a certain deadline.

New survey data shows the resurgence of green-zone plans, funded status trends and lessons for the future of multiemployer pensions.

Pension fund sues five janitorial service contractors for failing to pay required pension contributions and provide reporting information; court grants motion to dismiss but allows amended complaint.

Cir. July 7, 2026) This consolidated appeal arose from a dispute between the Trustees of the IAM National Pension Fund and a family of affiliated truck dealerships operating as M&K Truck Centers.

Iron workers' unions sued a crane company for failing to make required contributions to union trust funds for work performed by its employees, but the court affirmed summary judgment against the unions because they lacked admissible evidence of damages after an expert witness was excluded.

the case in which the Supreme Court held in May that a plan’s actuary may calculate an employer’s withdrawal liability using actuarial assumptions adopted after the measurement date.

The United States Supreme Court recently held in M&K Employee Solutions, LLC et al. v. Trustees of the IAM National Pension Fund that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”)

and what trustees can do to lower administrative costs.