The U.S. Supreme Court’s leaked draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization now has become law with the Court’s recent issuance of its final opinion. A post-Roe America raises new and challenging issues for employers concerning employment law, medical plan coverage, and employee privacy.  Issues Related to Employment Law Allegations of Discrimination The Dobbs decision will likely bring about a Read More

The IRS has announced the implementation of a 90-Day Pre-Examination Compliance Pilot program in its Employee Plans newsletter dated June 5, 2022 ("the Pilot Program). When the IRS identifies a retirement plan for an audit, it will first send a letter to the plan sponsor of the retirement plan. The letter will inform the plan sponsor that the plan has been selected for audit and advise that it has 90 days to identify Read More

A three-panel judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to AT&T amid claims of ERISA violations by a former employee. The case is In Craig Canter v. AT&T Umbrella Benefit Plan No. 3 et al., case number 21-1514.  Craig Canter worked as a premises technician for Illinois Bell Telephone Co., a subsidiary of AT&T. His job involved Read More

A federal district court in Utah has held in two similar cases that plan-imposed deadlines for filing lawsuits in ERISA cases are unenforceable. The court reasoned that the deadlines were inapplicable to the cases at issue because the entity’s final denial letters to the participants did not contain notice of the deadlines. The cases are E.F. v. United HealthCare Ins. Co., 2022 WL 957200 (D. Utah 2022) and Anne A. Read More

The IRS recently withdrew and replaced regulations that it had proposed in 2019 concerning sections 413(c) and 413(e) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), which offer an exception to section 413’s “unified-plan rule” (the Rule). The Rule is more commonly known as the “one-bad-apple rule” for multiple employer (MEP) and pooled employer (PEP) plans.  Under the Rule, a failure by one participating employer in a MEP or Read More

Various federal appellate courts have considered cases in which employers attempt to prevent ERISA class action lawsuits by including mandatory arbitration requirements into their plan documents. Due to the varying outcomes of these cases, this issue is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court for resolution.  In September 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the order of the U.S. District Read More

The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act (“SECURE Act”), which went into effect on January 1, 2020, made significant changes to the laws governing IRAs and other retirement plans. In particular, the SECURE Act affected the required beginning date of participants or the date on which participants must begin taking annual required minimum distributions (RMDs). The SECURE Act also impacted Read More

Section 280G of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) applies to so-called "golden parachute payments," which generally are made when a corporation experiences a change in control. Under this section, disqualified individuals who receive excess parachute payments must pay a 20% excise tax on those payments, and the corporation loses the deduction for those payments.  Parachute payments are payments contingent on a Read More

Brittany Hope, a former full-time brand manager for Amazon, has filed suit against the company in a New York federal district court. Hope claims that the retail giant wrongfully terminated her for “job abandonment” in July 2020 after taking medical leave for developing long-term health complications from a COVID-19 infection. She also claims that Amazon violated state and federal disability laws and state labor laws Read More

Plan fiduciaries have a duty under ERISA to pay only a reasonable amount for services provided to the plan. When a group health plan offers insurance, service providers may receive commissions directly from the insurance company rather than from the plan. This arrangement can make it difficult for plan fiduciaries to determine what they paid the service provider and whether that fee was reasonable.  The purpose of Read More