SECURE 2.0's new education and student loan benefits went into effect in 2024, which gives employers new opportunities to support their employees. Employers can now match student loan repayments in conjunction with their retirement plans, and employees can roll over 529 Education Savings Plans into Roth IRA savings accounts. Student Loan Repayment Matching Under SECURE 2.0, employers of any size can now offer a Read More

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued proposed regulations on automatic portability programs. These programs help employees who change jobs consolidate their retirement funds by automatically transferring IRAs from their former plans to their new employers' plans. For 2024, the minimum automatic IRA transfer amount under an automatic portability program is $7,000. Under the proposed regulations, a Read More

A Florida district court judge has administratively closed an ERISA class action lawsuit against defense contractor L3Harris after the parties settled following mediation, subject to court approval of class counsel’s motion for preliminary settlement approval, to be filed within 60 days. The case is Robert J. Stengl et al. v. L3Harris Technologies Inc. et al., case number 6:22-cv-00572, U.S. District Court for the Read More

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has given final approval to a $6.75 million settlement of a class action lawsuit filed by current and former LinkedIn employees regarding their investment options in the company 401(k) plan. The settlement covers more than 17,000 people participating in the company's retirement plan from August 14, 2014, to July 1, 2020. The employees alleged that Read More

The U.S. Department of Labor has released the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Annual Adjustments for 2024. These adjustments apply to a wide range of benefit-related civil monetary penalties and to all penalties assessed after January 15, 2024, concerning violations that occurred after November 2, 2015. The most notable penalty adjustments are as follows: The penalty for failing to file Form Read More

A federal court has preliminarily approved a $1 million settlement in a class action lawsuit between a large company and its former employees over allegations that its COBRA notice was threatening and misleading. The case is Blessinger v. Wells Fargo & Co., 2023 WL 8432223 (M.D. Fla. 2023). The former employees filed a class action lawsuit against the employer, claiming that in its COBRA notice, the employer Read More

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would rescind a 2018 DOL rule entitled “Definition of Employee – Association Health Plans,” or the 2018 AHP Rule. The purpose of the rule was to expand the availability of AHPs. Before the 2018 AHP rule, a multiple employer welfare arrangement (MEWA) typically constituted a single Read More

The Internal Revenue Service, Employee Benefits Security Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (collectively, “the Departments”) recently issued final rules concerning fees established by the No Surprises Act for the federal Independent Dispute Resolution (IDR) process. The Departments issued these rules through a notice and comment rulemaking process after a federal court overturned Read More

  In 2023, various federal government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), unveiled four significant rules concerning employee benefits. DOL’s Proposed Fiduciary Rule In late October, the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) issued a proposed rule that would change the definition of an investment advice fiduciary under the Read More

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced its first settlement of a HIPAA case involving a phishing cyberattack. In May 2021, Lafourche Medical Group, LLC, filed a HIPAA breach notification with OCR stating that a hacker had obtained electronic patient health information (ePHI) via a phishing cyberattack. OCR's press release states, "Phishing is a type of Read More