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Page Number: 33

20 

THOLE v. U. S. BANK N. A. 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

in 

the 

lawsuits  where 

represent the plan.  Ante, at 5.  Although a formal assign-
ment or appointment suffices for standing, it is not neces-
sary.  See, e.g., Food and Commercial Workers, 517 U. S., at 
552; Whitmore, 495 U. S., at 162.  Regardless, Congress ex-
pressly and thereby legally assigned pension-plan partici-
pants and beneficiaries the right to represent their plan, in-
cluding 
other  would-be 
representative  is  the  defendant.  29  U. S. C.  §§1132(a)(2), 
(3); see also, e.g., Restatement (Third) of Trusts §94, Com-
ment d(1), at 7 (trust terms may confer standing to sue the 
trustee).  ERISA was “primarily concerned with the possi-
ble  misuse  of  plan  assets,  and  with  remedies  that  would 
protect the entire plan.”  Russell, 473 U. S., at 142; see also 
id., at 140–142, nn. 8–9.9  Far from “ ‘automatically’ ” con-
ferring  petitioners  standing  to  sue  or  creating  an  injury
from whole cloth, cf. ante, at 5, ERISA assigns the right to
sue on the plan’s unquestionably cognizable harm: here, fi-
duciary breaches causing wrongful gains and hundreds of 
millions  of  dollars  in  losses.    So  even  under  the  Court’s 
framing, it does not matter whether petitioners “sustained
any monetary injury,” ante, at 2, because their pension plan 
did. 

To  support  standing,  a  statute  may  (but  need  not)
legally  designate  a  party  to  sue  on  another’s  behalf.  Be-
cause ERISA does so here, petitioners should be permitted
to sue for their pension plan’s sake. 

—————— 

9 Neither  Sprint,  554  U. S.  269,  nor  Vermont  Agency  of  Natural  Re-
sources  v.  United  States  ex  rel.  Stevens,  529  U. S.  765  (2000),  is  to  the 
contrary.  Cf. ante, at 5.  Both decisions undermine today’s result.  See 
Sprint, 554 U. S., at 280, 287 (noting in the Article III context that “ ‘na-
ked legal title’ ” has long permitted suit and that “federal courts routinely
entertain suits which will result in relief for parties that are not them-
selves directly bringing suit,” such as when “[t]rustees bring suits to ben-
efit their trusts”); Vermont Agency, 529 U. S., at 774 (showing that even
a partial statutory assignment grants constitutional standing to sue on 
another’s behalf ).