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.

The quarterly survey tracks health plan design challenges after Barbich v. Northwestern, the forfeiture line following the Eighth Circuit's standing dismissal in Matula, actuarial-equivalence rulings in the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits, and the Supreme Court's withdrawal-liability decision in M&K Employee Solutions, with the Fifth Circuit's en banc surcharge case and Anderson v. Intel on the watch list.

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.

The first half of 2026 has seen major litigation developments in cases concerning the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), including decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits.

On remand from the Supreme Court, Judge Castel split the jury question in the surviving prohibited-transaction claim: the request that fiduciaries make good the plan's losses goes to a jury, because, in the court's words, it is "a 'make good' remedy, and hence legal in nature, to which the plaintiffs are entitled to a jury," while the equitable relief, including removal of fiduciaries, an accounting, and reformation, will be tried by the bench. The order's conclusion reads as a flat denial of Cornell's motion, but the body grants it in part. Both halves matter to anyone tracking whether ERISA fiduciary claims get juries.

A novel lawsuit argues employers must offer fossil-fuel-free equity options as a faith-based accommodation, testing the Supreme Court’s Groff decision.

ERISA attorneys explain how the widely followed case will affect employers, no matter how the Supreme Court ends up ruling.

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.

asked the nation’s highest court to affirm a decision in favor of plan fiduciaries.

ARA analysis of the JPMorgan prescription-drug fiduciary litigation, where a health plan excessive-cost suit survived dismissal in part on arguments drawn from a recent Supreme Court decision. The piece examines why a documented process may not end the inquiry when plaintiffs plead prohibited-transaction claims.

The organization’s amicus brief backed Intel and warned that allowing lawsuits based on hindsight would fuel costly litigation and harm 401(k) participants.

The groups all filed amicus briefs arguing for prudent ERISA processes over investment returns

Court ruled that General Obligations Law § 5-335 bars an insurer's subrogation lien for short-term disability benefits paid to an injured employee, invalidating the insurer's lien.

Amicus briefs by the Department of Labor and the employer group warned the Supreme Court to not allow lawsuits under ERISA based solely on an investment fund’s underperformance.

The company argues that claims of underperformance should be judged against a meaningful, comparable benchmark.

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”)