For employers that sponsor and administer employee benefit plans, various pieces of federal legislation create a multilayered regime of detailed regulatory requirements. Primarily, employer-sponsored benefit plans are...more
The wide-ranging SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (“SECURE 2.0”) radically altered the retirement plan landscape, and is likely to create a significant number of action items for sponsors of retirement plans for tax-exempt entities and...more
If you thought that church plan litigation was effectively over after the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the traditional interpretation of the ERISA church plan definition in its 2017 decision in Advocate Health Care...more
On March 27, 2020, the Eighth Circuit in Sanzone v. Mercy Health, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 9537 (8th Cir. March 27, 2020), ruled on several key issues on the “church plan” exemption to ERISA. As background, beginning in 2013,...more
Many of the provisions of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (the “SECURE Act”) do not apply to non-electing church plans, but some do, notably those dealing with certain 403(b)(9) plans and...more
On Thursday, December 19, the Senate passed two spending bills to fund the government through September 30, 2020, one of which (H.R. 1865, the “Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020” or the “Act”) contains the...more
One great about the Internal Revenue Service is that they tell us what they’re up to. They will tell us what their priorities on, so we will know what they will concentrate on. It’s best as a retirement plan provider to see...more
Generally, a 403(b) plan is a retirement planning program whereby a public school or tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization (including churches) makes contributions for their employees (and certain ministers) to specific types of...more
Last year, in Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a special type of “church plan,” intended to be exempt from Title I of ERISA and many Internal Revenue Code requirements, does not...more
The IRS has once again confirmed that an employee benefit plan maintained by a church or church-affiliated organization is not subject to ERISA unless the plan sponsor makes an affirmative written election to have ERISA apply...more
This month’s Friday Five examines cases applying an arbitrary and capricious standard of review and recent “church plan” jurisprudence, and cases that address the issue of a participant’s burden to prove that disease did not...more
Since 2016, the Internal Revenue Service Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division (TE/GE) has followed a practice of posting “issue snapshots” – technical summaries of tax issues provided for reference purposes – from time...more
Timely Topics - By Shannon B. Hartsfield - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Jan. 18, 2018, the creation of a new division within its Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR is described as...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In Medina v. Catholic Health Initiatives, — F.3d —, 2017 WL 6459961 (10th Cir. Dec. 19, 2017), the Tenth Circuit held that a retirement plan sponsored by Catholic Health Initiatives (“CHI”), a...more
On November 29, 2017, the Department of Labor (DOL) further delayed and extended the applicability date of the 2016 Final Rule amending claims procedures for ERISA-covered employee benefit plans. Previously, the Final Rule...more
Advocate Health Care Network et al v. Stapleton et al, 581 U.S. __ (2017) - In one of the recent opinions rendered by the United States Supreme Court, it was found that pension plans maintained by religiously affiliated...more
Where is your PHI Data Traveling Today? With most vendors offering and pushing cloud computing solutions and offsite data backup, or guaranteeing offsite backup of data they process for you, many HIPAA covered entities and...more
On March 27, 2017, the then 8 Supreme Court Justices heard oral arguments for three consolidated cases regarding the outer bounds of the “church plan” exception under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974...more
On June 5, 2017, the United States Supreme Court rendered an important decision that will impact restructurings — particularly health care provider restructurings — going forward. The Supreme Court reversed the Third, Seventh...more
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton implicates the benefit plans maintained by nonprofit entities affiliated with a church or religious organization, including many hospitals and...more
Executive Summary: The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton serves as a reminder to church-affiliated hospitals and other organizations using the ERISA church plan exemption to review the...more
Over 30 lawsuits have been filed over the past several years alleging that defined benefit plans maintained by religiously-affiliated hospital systems are not entitled to church plan status under the Employee Retirement...more
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that employee benefit plans sponsored by certain church-affiliated organizations do not have to be established by a church to be considered a “church plan,” which is exempt...more
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that retirement plans sponsored by church-affiliated organizations, such as hospitals, are exempt from ERISA. ERISA’s “church plan exemption” provides that a retirement plan that is...more
Hospitals that are “church-affiliated” may be breathing easier this week, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Monday that defined benefit qualified retirement plans (a/k/a pension plans) are not subject to the...more