(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2016 1 

Syllabus 

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. 

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK ET AL. v. 

STAPLETON ET AL. 

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR 

THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT 

No. 16–74. Argued March 27, 2017—Decided June 5, 2017* 

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) generally obligates private employers offering pension plans to adhere to 

an array of rules designed to ensure plan solvency and protect plan

participants. “[C]hurch plan[s],” however, are exempt from those 

regulations. 29 U. S. C. §1003(b)(2). From the beginning, ERISA has

defined a “church plan” as “a plan established and maintained . . . for

its employees . . . by a church.” §1002(33)(A). Congress then amended the statute to expand that definition, adding the provision whose

effect is at issue here: “A plan established and maintained for its employees . . . by a church . . . includes a plan maintained by an organization . . . the principal purpose . . . of which is the administration or 

funding of [such] plan . . . for the employees of a church . . . , if such 

organization is controlled by or associated with a church.” 

§1002(33)(C)(i). (This opinion refers to the organizations described in

that provision as “principal-purpose organizations.”)

 Petitioners, who identify themselves as three church-affiliated 

nonprofits that run hospitals and other healthcare facilities (collectively, hospitals), offer their employees defined-benefit pension plans.

Those plans were established by the hospitals themselves, and are

managed by internal employee-benefits committees. Respondents,

current and former hospital employees, filed class actions alleging

that the hospitals’ pension plans do not fall within ERISA’s church-

—————— 

*Together with No. 16–86, Saint Peter’s Healthcare System et al. v. 

Kaplan, on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the 

Third Circuit, and No. 16–258, Dignity Health et al. v. Rollins, on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 
 

 

2 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Syllabus 

plan exemption because they were not established by a church. The 

District Courts, agreeing with the employees, held that a plan must 

be established by a church to qualify as a church plan. The Courts of 

Appeals affirmed. 

Held: A plan maintained by a principal-purpose organization qualifies 

as a “church plan,” regardless of who established it. Pp. 5–15.

(a) The term “church plan” initially “mean[t]” only “a plan established and maintained . . . by a church.” But subparagraph (C)(i)

provides that the original definitional phrase will now “include” another—“a plan maintained by [a principal-purpose] organization.” 

That use of the word “include” is not literal, but tells readers that a 

different type of plan should receive the same treatment (i.e., an exemption) as the type described in the old definition. In other words, 

because Congress deemed the category of plans “established and 

maintained by a church” to “include” plans “maintained by” principalpurpose organizations, those plans—and all those plans—are exempt

from ERISA’s requirements. 

Had Congress wanted, as the employees contend, to alter only the 

maintenance requirement, it could have provided in subparagraph

(C)(i) that “a plan maintained by a church includes a plan maintained

by” a principal-purpose organization—removing “established and”

from the first part of the sentence. But Congress did not adopt that 

ready alternative. Instead, it added language whose most natural

reading is to enable a plan “maintained” by a principal-purpose organization to substitute for a plan both “established” and “maintained” by a church. And as a corollary to that point, the employees’

construction runs aground on the so-called surplusage canon—the

presumption that each word Congress uses is there for a reason. The 

employees read subparagraph (C)(i) as if it were missing the two

words “established and.” This Court, however, “give[s] effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute.” Williams v. Taylor, 529 

U. S. 362, 404. Pp. 5–12.

(b) Both parties’ accounts of Congress’s purpose in enacting subparagraph (C)(i) tend to confirm this Court’s reading that plans

maintained by principal-purpose organizations are eligible for the 

church-plan exemption, whatever their origins. According to the 

hospitals, Congress wanted to ensure that churches and churchaffiliated organizations received comparable treatment under ERISA.

If that is so, this Court’s construction of the text fits Congress’s objective to a T, as a church-establishment requirement would necessarily 

disfavor plans created by church affiliates. The employees, by contrast, claim that subparagraph (C)(i)’s main goal was to bring within

the church-plan exemption plans managed by local pension boards—

organizations often used by congregational denominations—so as to 
 

 

Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 3 

Syllabus 

ensure parity between congregational and hierarchical churches. But 

that account cuts against, not in favor of, their position. Keeping the

church-establishment requirement would have prevented some plans 

run by pension boards—the very entities the employees say Congress 

most wanted to benefit—from qualifying as “church plans” under 

ERISA. Pp. 12–14. 

No. 16–74, 817 F. 3d 517; No. 16–86, 810 F. 3d 175; and No. 16–258, 

830 F. 3d 900, reversed. 

KAGAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all other

Members joined, except GORSUCH, J., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a concurring opinion. 
 

 

_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 1 

Opinion of the Court 

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Nos. 16–74, 16–86, and 16–258 

ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK, 

ET AL., PETITIONERS 

16–74 v. 

MARIA STAPLETON, ET AL.; 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT
 

SAINT PETER’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, 

ET AL., PETITIONERS 

16–86 v. 

LAURENCE KAPLAN; AND 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
 

DIGNITY HEALTH, ET AL., PETITIONERS 

16–258 v. 

STARLA ROLLINS 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[June 5, 2017]

 JUSTICE KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court. 

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974

(ERISA) exempts “church plan[s]” from its otherwise-
 

2 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Opinion of the Court 

comprehensive regulation of employee benefit plans. 88 

Stat. 840, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §1003(b)(2). Under the 

statute, certain plans for the employees of churches or

church-affiliated nonprofits count as “church plans” even

though not actually administered by a church. See 

§1002(33)(C)(i). The question presented here is whether

a church must have originally established such a plan for 

it to so qualify. ERISA, we hold, does not impose that 

requirement. 

I 

Petitioners identify themselves as three churchaffiliated nonprofits that run hospitals and other 

healthcare facilities (collectively, hospitals).1 They offer

defined-benefit pension plans to their employees. Those 

plans were established by the hospitals themselves—not 

by a church—and are managed by internal employeebenefits committees. 

ERISA generally obligates private employers offering 

pension plans to adhere to an array of rules designed to 

ensure plan solvency and protect plan participants. See 

generally New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue 

Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U. S. 645, 651 

(1995) (cataloguing ERISA’s “reporting and disclosure 

mandates,” “participation and vesting requirements,” and 

—————— 

1The parties disputed the hospitals’ church ties in the courts below,

see n. 2, infra, but we assume for purposes of this decision that the

facts are as the hospitals describe them. On those facts: Advocate 

Health Care Network operates 12 hospitals and some 250 other

healthcare facilities in Illinois, and is associated with the Evangelical

Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ. Saint 

Peter’s Healthcare System runs a teaching hospital and several other

medical facilities in New Jersey, and is both owned and controlled by a

Roman Catholic diocese there. And Dignity Health runs an extensive 

network of community hospitals throughout the country, and maintains 

ties to the Catholic religious orders that initially sponsored some of its

facilities. 
 

Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 3 

Opinion of the Court 

“funding standards”). But in enacting the statute, Congress made an important exception. “[C]hurch plan[s]” 

have never had to comply with ERISA’s requirements. 

§1003(b)(2).

The statutory definition of “church plan” came in two

distinct phases. From the beginning, ERISA provided that

“[t]he term ‘church plan’ means a plan established and 

maintained . . . for its employees . . . by a church or by a 

convention or association of churches.” §1002(33)(A).

Then, in 1980, Congress amended the statute to expand 

that definition by deeming additional plans to fall within 

it. The amendment specified that for purposes of the

church-plan definition, an “employee of a church” would 

include an employee of a church-affiliated organization 

(like the hospitals here). §1002(33)(C)(ii)(II). And it added 

the provision whose effect is at issue in these cases: 

“A plan established and maintained for its employees 

. . . by a church or by a convention or association of 

churches includes a plan maintained by an organization . . . the principal purpose or function of which is 

the administration or funding of a plan or program for

the provision of retirement benefits or welfare benefits, or both, for the employees of a church or a convention or association of churches, if such organization is controlled by or associated with a church 

or a convention or association of churches.” 

§1002(33)(C)(i). 

That is a mouthful, for lawyers and non-lawyers alike; to 

digest it more easily, note that everything after the word

“organization” in the third line is just a (long-winded)

description of a particular kind of church-associated entity—which this opinion will call a “principal-purpose organization.” The main job of such an entity, as the statute 

explains, is to fund or manage a benefit plan for the employees of churches or (per the 1980 amendment’s other 
 

4 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Opinion of the Court 

part) of church affiliates.

The three federal agencies responsible for administering 

ERISA have long read those provisions, when taken together, to exempt plans like the hospitals’ from the statute’s mandates. (The relevant agencies are the Internal

Revenue Service, Department of Labor, and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.) The original definitional provision—§1002(33)(A), or paragraph (A) for short—defines a

“church plan” as one “established and maintained . . . by a 

church”—not by a church-affiliated nonprofit. But according to the agencies, the later (block-quoted) provision—

§1002(33)(C)(i), or just subparagraph (C)(i)—expands that

definition to include any plan maintained by a principalpurpose organization, regardless of whether a church

initially established the plan. And, the agencies believe,

the internal benefits committee of a church-affiliated 

nonprofit counts as such an organization. See, e.g., IRS 

General Counsel Memorandum No. 39007 (Nov. 2, 1982),

App. 636–637. That interpretation has appeared in hundreds of private letter rulings and opinion letters issued

since 1982, including several provided to the hospitals

here. See App. 57–69, 379–386, 668–715. 

The three cases before us are part of a recent wave of

litigation challenging the agencies’ view. Respondents,

current and former employees of the hospitals, filed class 

actions alleging that their employers’ pension plans do not 

fall within ERISA’s church-plan exemption (and thus must 

satisfy the statute’s requirements). That is so, the employees claim, because those plans were not established by 

a church—and ERISA, even as amended, demands that all 

“church plans” have such an origin. According to the 

employees, the addition of subparagraph (C)(i) allowed 

principal-purpose organizations to maintain such plans in

lieu of churches; but that provision kept as-is paragraph

(A)’s insistence that churches themselves establish “church 

plans.” See id., at 265–268, 435–437, 783–785. The Dis-
Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 5 

Opinion of the Court 

trict Courts handling the cases agreed with the employees’ 

position, and therefore held that the hospitals’ plans must 

comply with ERISA.2 

The Courts of Appeals for the Third, Seventh, and Ninth

Circuits affirmed those decisions. The Third Circuit ruled 

first, concluding that ERISA’s “plain text” requires that a 

pension plan be established by a church to qualify for the

church-plan exemption. Kaplan v. Saint Peter’s 

Healthcare System, 810 F. 3d 175, 177 (2015). In the 

court’s view, paragraph (A) set out “two requirements” for

the exemption—“establishment and maintenance”—and

“only the latter is expanded by the use of ‘includes’” in 

subparagraph (C)(i). Id., at 181. The Seventh and Ninth 

Circuits relied on similar reasoning to decide in the employees’ favor. See Stapleton v. Advocate Health Care 

Network, 817 F. 3d 517, 523 (CA7 2016); Rollins v. Dignity 

Health, 830 F. 3d 900, 906 (CA9 2016). 

In light of the importance of the issue, this Court granted

certiorari. 579 U. S. ___ (2016). 

II 

The dispute in these cases about what counts as a 

“church plan” hinges on the combined meaning of paragraph (A) and subparagraph (C)(i). Interpretive purists

may refer back as needed to the provisions as quoted 

above. See supra, at 3. But for those who prefer their

statutes in (comparatively) user-friendly form, those provisions go as follows: 

Under paragraph (A), a “‘church plan’ means a plan 

—————— 

2The employees alternatively argued in the District Courts that the

hospitals’ pension plans are not “church plans” because the hospitals do 

not have the needed association with a church and because, even if they

do, their internal benefits committees do not count as principal-purpose

organizations. See App. 267–269, 437–438, 785–786. Those issues are 

not before us, and nothing we say in this opinion expresses a view of

how they should be resolved. 
 

6 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Opinion of the Court 

established and maintained . . . by a church.” 

Under subparagraph (C)(i), “[a] plan established and 

maintained . . . by a church . . . includes a plan maintained by [a principal-purpose] organization.”3 

The parties agree that under those provisions, a “church

plan” need not be maintained by a church; it may instead

be maintained by a principal-purpose organization. But 

the parties differ as to whether a plan maintained by that

kind of organization must still have been established by a 

church to qualify for the church-plan exemption. The 

hospitals say no: The effect of subparagraph (C)(i) was to 

bring within the church-plan definition all pension plans 

maintained by a principal-purpose organization, regardless of who first established them. The employees say yes: 

Subparagraph (C)(i) altered only the requirement that a 

pension plan be maintained by a church, while leaving 

intact the church-establishment condition. We conclude 

that the hospitals have the better of the argument. 

Start, as we always do, with the statutory language—

here, a new definitional phrase piggy-backing on the one 

already existing. The term “church plan,” as just stated,

initially “mean[t]” only “a plan established and maintained . . . by a church.” But subparagraph (C)(i) provides

that the original definitional phrase will now “include”

another—“a plan maintained by [a principal-purpose]

organization.” That use of the word “include” is not literal—any more than when Congress says something like 

“a State ‘includes’ Puerto Rico and the District of Colum-

—————— 

3Again, we use the term “principal-purpose organization” as shorthand for the entity described in subparagraph (C)(i): a churchassociated organization whose chief purpose or function is to fund or 

administer a benefits plan for the employees of either a church or a 

church-affiliated nonprofit. See supra, at 3. And again, the scope of

that term—and whether it comprehends the hospitals’ internal benefits 

committees—is not at issue here. See n. 2, supra. 
 

Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 7 

Opinion of the Court 

bia.” See, e.g., 29 U. S. C. §1002(10).4 Rather, it tells 

readers that a different type of plan should receive the 

same treatment (i.e., an exemption) as the type described 

in the old definition. And those newly favored plans, once 

again, are simply those “maintained by a principalpurpose organization”—irrespective of their origins. In 

effect, Congress provided that the new phrase can stand in

for the old one as follows: “The term ‘church plan’ means a

plan established and maintained by a church [a plan

maintained by a principal-purpose organization].” The 

church-establishment condition thus drops out of the

picture.

Consider the same point in the form of a simple logic

problem, with paragraph (A) and subparagraph (C)(i) as 

its first two steps: 

Premise 1: A plan established and maintained by a

church is an exempt church plan. 

Premise 2: A plan established and maintained by a

church includes a plan maintained by a principalpurpose organization. 

Deduction: A plan maintained by a principal-purpose 

organization is an exempt church plan. 

Or, as one court put the point without any of the ERISA

terminology: “[I]f A is exempt, and A includes C, then C is 

exempt.” Overall v. Ascension, 23 F. Supp. 3d 816, 828 

(ED Mich. 2014). Just so. Because Congress deemed the

category of plans “established and maintained by a 

church” to “include” plans “maintained by” principalpurpose organizations, those plans—and all those plans— 

are exempt from ERISA’s requirements. 

—————— 

4Or any more than when Congress, in the same 1980 amendment to 

ERISA, provided that an “employee of a church” was to “include[]” an

employee of a church-affiliated organization. §1002(33)(C)(ii); see 

supra, at 3. 
 

 

8 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Opinion of the Court 

Had Congress wanted, as the employees contend, to

alter only the maintenance requirement, it had an easy 

way to do so—differing by only two words from the language it chose, but with an altogether different meaning. 

Suppose Congress had provided that “a plan maintained

by a church includes a plan maintained by” a principalpurpose organization, leaving out the words “established 

and” from the first part of the sentence. That amendment 

would have accomplished exactly what the employees

argue Congress intended: The language, that is, would 

have enabled a principal-purpose organization to take on

the maintenance of a “church plan,” but left untouched the

requirement that a church establish the plan in the first

place. But Congress did not adopt that ready alternative.

Instead, it added language whose most natural reading is

to enable a plan “maintained” by a principal-purpose

organization to substitute for a plan both “established” 

and “maintained” by a church. That drafting decision

indicates that Congress did not in fact want what the 

employees claim. See, e.g., Lozano v. Montoya Alvarez, 

572 U. S. 1, ___–___ (2014) (slip op., at 13–14) (When 

legislators did not adopt “obvious alternative” language, 

“the natural implication is that they did not intend” the

alternative).

A corollary to this point is that the employees’ construction runs aground on the so-called surplusage canon—the 

presumption that each word Congress uses is there for a 

reason. See generally A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading

Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 174–179 (2012). 

As just explained, the employees urge us to read subparagraph (C)(i) as if it were missing the two words “established and.” The employees themselves do not contest that 

point: They offer no account of what function that language would serve on their proposed interpretation. See 

Brief for Respondents 34–35. In essence, the employees 

ask us to treat those words as stray marks on a page— 
 

 

Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 9 

Opinion of the Court 

notations that Congress regrettably made but did not 

really intend. Our practice, however, is to “give effect, if

possible, to every clause and word of a statute.” Williams 

v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 404 (2000) (internal quotation

marks omitted). And here, that means construing the 

words “established and” in subparagraph (C)(i) as removing, for plans run by principal-purpose organizations, 

paragraph (A)’s church-establishment condition. 

The employees’ primary argument to the contrary takes

the form of a supposed interpretive principle: “[I]f a definition or rule has two criteria, and a further provision expressly modifies only one of them, that provision is understood to affect only the criterion it expands or modifies.”

Brief for Respondents 22. Applied here, the employees 

explain, that principle requires us to read subparagraph

(C)(i) as “modify[ing] only the criterion” in paragraph (A)

that “it expressly expands (‘maintained’), while leaving the 

other criterion (‘established’) unchanged.” Id., at 14. The 

employees cite no precedent or other authority to back up

their proposed rule of construction, but they offer a 

thought-provoking hypothetical to demonstrate its good 

sense. Id., at 22. Imagine, they say, that a statute provides free insurance to a “person who is disabled and a

veteran,” and an amendment then states that “a person

who is disabled and a veteran includes a person who 

served in the National Guard.” Ibid. (quoting 810 F. 3d, at 

181). Would a non-disabled member of the National 

Guard be entitled to the insurance benefit? Surely not,

the employees answer: All of us would understand the 

“includes” provision to expand (or clarify) only the meaning of “veteran”—leaving unchanged the requirement of a

disability. And the same goes here, the employees claim.

But one good example does not a general rule make. 

Consider a variant of the employees’ hypothetical: A statute offers free insurance to a “person who enlisted and 

served in the active Armed Forces,” with a later amend-
 

 

 

10 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Opinion of the Court 

ment providing that “a person who enlisted and served in 

the active Armed Forces includes a person who served in

the National Guard.” Would a person who served in the 

National Guard be ineligible for benefits unless she had 

also enlisted in the active Armed Forces—say, the regular

Army or Navy? Of course not.5 Two hypotheticals with

similar grammatical constructions, two different results.

In the employees’ example, the mind rebels against reading the statute literally, in line with the logical and canonical principles described above. In the variant, by contrast, the statute’s literal meaning and its most natural 

meaning cohere: Satisfaction of the amendment’s single

eligibility criterion—service in the National Guard—is

indeed enough. What might account for that divergence?

And what does such an explanation suggest for ERISA? 

Two features of the employees’ hypothetical, when taken 

in combination, make it effective. First, the criteria 

there—veteran-status and disability—are relatively distinct from one another. (Compare enlistment and service, 

which address similar matters and tend to travel in tan-

—————— 

5You might ask yourself, on reading this hypothetical statute, why 

Congress would not have made the removal of both original conditions 

clearer still by stating that the original provision “includes a person

who enlisted and served in the National Guard.” We won’t go down the 

rabbit hole of further expounding on a fictional statute, but we can

answer a parallel question for subparagraph (C)(i). Suppose Congress

had stated that “[a] plan established and maintained . . . by a church

. . . includes a plan established and maintained by [a principal-purpose] 

organization.” That language would have left out of the “church plan” 

definition pension plans originally established by churches, but subsequently maintained by principal-purpose organizations. And everyone 

agrees—the employees no less than the hospitals—that Congress 

wanted to treat those plans as “church plans.” (The dispute is only as

to plans that principal-purpose organizations both establish and 

maintain.) See supra, at 6; Brief for Petitioners 25–26; Brief for Respondents 14, 35; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24. So 

Congress could not have taken such a drafting tack to eliminate the 

necessity of church establishment. 
Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 11 

Opinion of the Court 

dem, the one preceding the other.) The more independent

the specified variables, the more likely that they were

designed to have standalone relevance. Second and yet

more crucial, the employees’ example trades on our background understanding that a given interpretation is simply

implausible—that it could not possibly have been what

Congress wanted. Congress, we feel sure, would not have 

intended all National Guardsmen to get a benefit that is 

otherwise reserved for disabled veterans. (Compare that

to our sense of whether Congress would have meant to 

hinge benefits to Guardsmen on their enlistment in a 

different service.) That sense of inconceivability does most 

of the work in the employees’ example, urging readers to

discard usual rules of interpreting text because they will 

lead to a “must be wrong” outcome.

But subparagraph (C)(i) possesses neither of those

characteristics. For starters, the criteria at issue— 

establishment and maintenance—are not unrelated. The 

former serves as a necessary precondition of the latter,

and both describe an aspect of an entity’s involvement 

with a benefit plan. Indeed, for various purposes, ERISA

treats the terms “establish” and “maintain” interchangeably. See, e.g., §1002(16)(B) (defining the “sponsor” of a

plan as the organization that “establishe[s] or maintain[s]” 

the plan). So an amendment altering the one requirement

could naturally alter the other too. What’s more, nothing

we know about the way ERISA is designed to operate

makes that an utterly untenable result. Whereas the 

disability condition is central to the statutory scheme in

the employees’ hypothetical, the church-establishment 

condition, taken on its own, has limited functional significance. Establishment of a plan, after all, is a one-time,

historical event; it is the entity maintaining the plan that

has the primary ongoing responsibility (and potential

liability) to plan participants. See Brief for United States 

as Amicus Curiae 31; Rose v. Long Island R. R. Pension 
 

 

12 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Opinion of the Court 

Plan, 828 F. 2d 910, 920 (CA2 1987), cert. denied, 485

U. S. 936 (1988) (“[T]he status of the entity which currently

maintains a particular pension plan bears more relation 

to Congress’ goals in enacting ERISA and its various

exemptions[] than does the status of the entity which

established the plan”). So removing the establishment 

condition for plans run by principal-purpose organizations

has none of the contextual implausibility—the “Congress

could not possibly have meant that” quality—on which the

employees’ example principally rides.

To the contrary, everything we can tell from extrastatutory sources about Congress’s purpose in enacting

subparagraph (C)(i) supports our reading of its text. We 

say “everything we can tell” because in fact we cannot tell

all that much. The legislative materials in these cases

consist almost wholly of excerpts from committee hearings 

and scattered floor statements by individual lawmakers—

the sort of stuff we have called “among the least illuminating forms of legislative history.” NLRB v. SW General, 

Inc., 580 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (slip op., at 16). And even 

those lowly sources speak at best indirectly to the precise 

question here: None, that is, comments in so many words

on whether subparagraph (C)(i) altered paragraph (A)’s

church-establishment condition. Still, both the hospitals

and the employees have constructed narratives from those

bits and pieces about Congress’s goals in amending paragraph (A). And our review of their accounts—the employees’ nearly as much as the hospitals’—tends to confirm our 

conviction that plans maintained by principal-purpose

organizations are eligible for ERISA’s “church plan” exemption, whatever their origins.

According to the hospitals, Congress wanted to eliminate

any distinction between churches and church-affiliated

organizations under ERISA. See Brief for Petitioners 18, 33–35. The impetus behind the 1980 amendment, they claim, was an IRS decision holding that pen-
 

Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 13 

Opinion of the Court 

sion plans established by orders of Catholic Sisters (to

benefit their hospitals’ employees) did not qualify as 

“church plans” because the orders were not “carrying out

[the Church’s] religious functions.” IRS General Counsel 

Memorandum No. 37266, 1977 WL 46200, *5 (Sept. 22, 

1977). Many religious groups protested that ruling, criticizing the IRS for “attempting to define what is and what

is not [a] ‘church’ and how the mission of the church is to 

be carried out.” 125 Cong. Rec. 10054 (1979) (letter to 

Sen. Talmadge from the Lutheran Church–Missouri 

Synod); see id., at 10054–10058 (similar letters). And that 

anger, the hospitals maintain, was what prompted

ERISA’s amendment: Congress, they say, designed the

new provision to ensure that, however categorized, all

groups associated with church activities would receive 

comparable treatment. See Brief for Petitioners 35. 

If that is so, our construction of the text fits Congress’s

objective to a T. A church-establishment requirement

necessarily puts the IRS in the business of deciding just

what a church is and is not—for example (as in the IRS’s

ruling about the Sisters), whether a particular Catholic 

religious order should count as one. And that requirement, by definition, disfavors plans created by church

affiliates, as compared to those established by (whatever 

the IRS has decided are) churches. It thus makes key to

the “church plan” exemption the very line that, on the

hospitals’ account, Congress intended to erase. 

The employees tell a different story about the origins of 

subparagraph (C)(i)—focusing on the pension boards that

congregational denominations often used. See Brief for 

Respondents 14, 38–42; see also Brief for United States as 

Amicus Curiae 19–22. In line with their non-hierarchical 

nature, those denominations typically relied on separately

incorporated local boards—rather than entities integrated 

into a national church structure—to administer benefits 

for their ministers and lay workers. According to the 
 

 

 

 

14 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

Opinion of the Court 

employees, subparagraph (C)(i)’s main goal was to bring 

those local pension boards within the church-plan exemption, so as to ensure that congregational and hierarchical 

churches would receive the same treatment. In support of

their view, the employees cite several floor statements in 

which the amendment’s sponsors addressed that objective. 

See Brief for Respondents 38. Senator Talmadge, for 

example, stated that under the amendment, a “plan or 

program funded or administered through a pension board 

. . . will be considered a church plan.” 124 Cong. Rec. 

16523; see also 124 Cong. Rec. 12107 (remarks of Rep.

Conable).

But that account of subparagraph (C)(i)’s primary purpose cuts against, not in favor of, the employees’ position.

See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 21 (accepting the employees’ narrative, but arguing that it buttresses

the opposite conclusion). That is because, as hearing 

testimony disclosed, plans run by church-affiliated pension 

boards came in different varieties: Some were created by

church congregations, but others were established by the 

boards themselves. See, e.g., Hearings on S. 1090 et al. 

before the Subcommittee on Private Pension Plans and 

Employee Fringe Benefits of the Senate Committee on 

Finance, 96th Cong., 1st Sess., 400–401, 415–417 (1979).

And still others were sufficiently old that their provenance

could have become the subject of dispute. See id., at 411; 

125 Cong. Rec. 10052 (remarks of Sen. Talmadge) (“The 

average age of a church plan is at least 40 years”). So 

keeping the church-establishment requirement would 

have prevented some plans run by pension boards—the 

very entities the employees say Congress most wanted to

benefit—from qualifying as “church plans” under ERISA.

No argument the employees have offered here supports 

that goal-defying (much less that text-defying) statutory 

construction. 
Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 15 

Opinion of the Court 

III
 

ERISA provides (1) that a “church plan” means a “plan 

established and maintained . . . by a church” and (2) that a

“plan established and maintained . . . by a church” is to 

“include[] a plan maintained by” a principal-purpose 

organization. Under the best reading of the statute, a 

plan maintained by a principal-purpose organization 

therefore qualifies as a “church plan,” regardless of who 

established it. We accordingly reverse the judgments of 

the Courts of Appeals. 

It is so ordered.

 JUSTICE GORSUCH took no part in the consideration or 

decision of these cases. 
_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 1 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Nos. 16–74, 16–86, and 16–258 

ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK, 

ET AL., PETITIONERS 

16–74 v. 

MARIA STAPLETON, ET AL.; 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT
 

SAINT PETER’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, 

ET AL., PETITIONERS 

16–86 v. 

LAURENCE KAPLAN; AND 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
 

DIGNITY HEALTH, ET AL., PETITIONERS 

16–258 v. 

STARLA ROLLINS 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[June 5, 2017]

 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, concurring. 

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974

(ERISA) protects employees by ensuring “‘that if a worker 

has been promised a defined pension benefit upon retirement—and if he has fulfilled whatever conditions are 

required to obtain a vested benefit—he will actually receive it.’” Lockheed Corp. v. Spink, 517 U. S. 882, 887 
 

2 ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK v. STAPLETON 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring 

(1996). Any decision interpreting the provisions governing

which employers are subject to ERISA is ultimately a 

decision about which employees receive this assurance. 

Today, by holding that ERISA’s exemption for “church

plan[s],” 29 U. S. C. §1003(b)(2), covers plans neither 

established nor maintained by a church, the Court holds 

that scores of employees—who work for organizations that

look and operate much like secular businesses— 

potentially might be denied ERISA’s protections. In fact, 

it was the failure of unregulated “church plans” that 

spurred cases such as these. See, e.g., Brief for Respondents 7–8 (collecting cases and press reports of church plan 

failures).

I join the Court’s opinion because I am persuaded that it

correctly interprets the relevant statutory text. But I am 

nonetheless troubled by the outcome of these cases. As 

the majority acknowledges, ante, at 12, the available 

legislative history does not clearly endorse this result.

That silence gives me pause: The decision to exempt plans 

neither established nor maintained by a church could have 

the kind of broad effect that is usually thoroughly debated 

during the legislative process and thus recorded in the 

legislative record. And to the extent that Congress acted 

to exempt plans established by orders of Catholic Sisters, 

see ibid., it is not at all clear that Congress would take the 

same action today with respect to some of the largest

health-care providers in the country. Despite their relationship to churches, organizations such as petitioners

operate for-profit subsidiaries, see Dignity Health and 

Subordinate Corporations, Consolidated Financial Statements as of and for Years ended June 30, 2016 and 2015 

and Independent Auditors’ Report, p. 50, https://emma.

msrb.org/ES823341-ES646022-ES1041174.pdf (as last 

visited June 1, 2017); employ thousands of employees,

App. 774; App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 16–74, pp. 5a, 31a;

earn billions of dollars in revenue, ibid.; and compete in 
Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 3 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring 

the secular market with companies that must bear the 

cost of complying with ERISA. These organizations thus 

bear little resemblance to those Congress considered when

enacting the 1980 amendment to the church plan definition. This current reality might prompt Congress to take

a different path.

In the end, I agree with the majority that the statutory 

text compels today’s result. Other provisions also impact 

the scope of the “church plan” exemption. Those provisions—including the provisions governing which organizations qualify as principal purpose organizations permitted

to establish and maintain “church plans,” see, e.g., ante, at 

6, n. 3—need also be construed in line with their text and 

with a view toward effecting ERISA’s broad remedial 

purposes.