Washington, D.C., February 4, 2025 – The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) and a coalition of employee benefit industry groups urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to uphold a previous decision issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in William Drummond v. Southern Company Services (Drummond). In an amicus brief, ERIC and its coalition partners asked the court to affirm the ruling, explaining that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) empowers employers and plan participants with the authority to design and administer employee benefit plans – not the courts.
ERISA permits the use of actuarial assumptions to calculate the benefits due to participants and beneficiaries of defined benefit pension plans. Despite this long-held tenet of ERISA, the Appellants in Drummond urged the court to rewrite ERISA and impose their own evolving standards to calculate these benefits.
“When it passed ERISA, Congress made clear that it was not going to function as the Human Resources Department for every employer in America. Instead, it enacted specific guardrails and avoided legislating plan design details, because it recognized that those decisions are best left to employers,” said Tom Christina, Executive Director of the ERIC Legal Center. “The result is that, for the last 50 years, employers have offered benefit plans that are designed to reflect the needs of their employees. Those plans are a critical tool for attracting and retaining a high-quality workforce.”
Christina added, “The approach contemplated by the Appellants in Drummond suggests that the courts needlessly meddle, which will inevitably create more litigation, more confusion and more cost for plan sponsors. That means fewer resources available to invest in the plans and those who are served by them. Affirming the ruling of the lower court is critical to preserving the foundation of ERISA.”
In addition to ERIC, allied groups filing the amicus brief include the American Benefits Council and the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets Inc. The amicus brief was prepared by Crowell & Moring LLP and is available here.