Current Employment

On March 9, 2009, the Ninth Circuit entered its order denying the Golden Gate Restaurant Association’s October 22, 2008 petition for en banc review of the court’s earlier decision holding that the new San Francisco pay-or-play ordinance requiring covered employers to either pay a certain level of benefits or pay a tax to the city was not preempted by ERISA. A petition for cert to the Supreme Court is guaranteed, and it is quite likely we will be seeing such review.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court granted review of a 7th Circuit decision which held that a mutual fund advisor’s fee was not excessive and an action brought under the fiduciary obligations of section 36(b) of the Investment Company Act was not appropriate unless it could be demonstrated that the advisor misled the fund’s directors who approved the fee.

Earlier today, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which makes many changes affecting employee benefits law. One such change that employers must be aware of is the ARRA provision providing for a COBRA subsidy for individuals and/or their dependents who are terminated between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009.

On Monday, the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan, in which it ruled that a plan administrator must act in accordance with plan documents in determining who is a proper beneficiary under a plan even though that beneficiary previously waived his/her rights to a benefit under the plan via divorce decree.

This past weekend at the ABA Tax Section’s Midyear Meeting, practitioners discussed what we may expect in employee benefits from the Obama Administration.