A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently heard oral arguments in an architecture firm’s appeal of a district court judge’s order denying its attorney fees. Bowers + Kubota Consulting Inc. sought attorney fees against the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in an ERISA suit in which it prevailed. The case is Martin Walsh v. Brian Bowers et al., case number 22-15378, U.S. Court of Read More

A Florida federal district court judge partially granted a securities industry group’s motion for summary judgment, in which it sought to invalidate certain ERISA guidance from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The case is American Securities Association v. U.S. Department of Labor et al., case number 8:22-cv-00330, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. In her ruling, the judge found that FAQ 7 Read More

The 2020 Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) laid out new transparency responsibilities for hospitals and payers, including removing all gag clauses limiting data access and utilization. Benefits advisors should prepare, plan, and take all steps necessary to ready their plan sponsor clients for these major changes in the healthcare landscape. The newly available hospital and payer transparency (HPT) will allow plan Read More

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal from Envision Management Holding and employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) trustee Argent Trust Co., seeking to compel arbitration of an Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) lawsuit. The court found that an agreement in the ESOP plan documents directly contradicted plan participants’ remedies under ERISA, which triggered the effective Read More

The Trump administration declared both a COVID-19 national emergency and a public health emergency (PHE) in 2020. The national emergency is set to expire on March 1, 2023, and the PHE is set to expire on April 11, 2023. The Biden administration now has issued a statement of administrative policy stating its intention to extend both emergencies and end them on May 11, 2023. Its announcement is consistent with its Read More

A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit panel recently heard oral arguments over whether a proposed class action concerning alleged overcharges to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) should go to individual arbitration. ESOP plan trustee Argent Trust Co., employer Strategic Financial Solutions, and other executives and financial services companies appealed after a federal district court judge denied their Read More

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)'s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has released a fact sheet concerning its ERISA enforcement results for FY 2022. EBSA oversees 747,000 retirement plans, 2.5 million health plans, and 673,000 other welfare benefit plans, covering more than 152 million workers, retirees, and dependents. During FY 2022, EBSA recovered over $1.4 billion for plans, participants, and Read More

Twenty-five states have filed to block the implementation of a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) rule that allows fiduciaries to consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in choosing retirement investments. The states argue that the DOL rule conflicts with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which requires fiduciaries to consider financial benefits first, not nonfinancial and Read More

Three federal agencies - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Treasury Department, and the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) – jointly published proposed rules that would rescind the “moral exemption rule” concerning Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage of contraception. In 2018, the Trump administration enacted the policy, and the U.S. Supreme Court Read More

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have issued an initial joint report on the Independent Dispute Resolution (IDR) process containing two quarters of data from April 15 to September 30, 2022. Issuance of this report was delayed by the unexpectedly large volume of disputes submitted through the IDR portal, which required significant manual processing Read More