Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1712_0971.pdf
Page Number: 30

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

17 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

the plan’s behalf.  Typically that is the fiduciary’s job.  See 
§1102(a)(1) (fiduciaries have “authority to control and man-
age the operation and administration of the plan”).  But im-
agine  a  case  like  this  one,  where  the  fiduciaries  refuse  to 
sue because they would be the defendants.  Does the Con-
stitution compel a pension plan to let a fox guard the hen-
house? 

Of  course  not.  This  Court’s  representational  standing 
doctrine  permits  petitioners  to  sue  on  their  plan’s  behalf.
See  Food  and  Commercial  Workers  v.  Brown  Group,  Inc., 
517 U. S. 544, 557 (1996).  This doctrine “rests on the prem-
ise that in certain circumstances, particular  relationships
(recognized either by common-law tradition or by statute)
are sufficient to rebut the background presumption . . . that 
litigants may not assert the rights of absent third parties.” 
Ibid.  (footnotes  omitted).    This  is  especially  so  where,  as
here, there is “some sort of impediment” to the other party’s
“effective assertion of their own rights.”  R. Fallon, J. Man-
ning, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart & Wechsler’s The Fed-
eral Courts and the Federal System 158 (6th ed. 2009); see 
also Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 410–411 (1991).

The common law has long regarded a beneficiary’s repre-
sentational suit as a proper “basis for a lawsuit in English 
or American courts.”  Spokeo, 578 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 
9).  When “the trustee cannot or will not” sue, a beneficiary 
may  do  so  “as  a  temporary  representative  of  the  trust.”
Bogert  &  Bogert  §869.    The  common  law  also  allows  “the 
terms of a trust” to “confer upon others the power to enforce
the  trust,”  giving  that  person  “standing”  to  “bring  suit 
against  the  trustee.”  Restatement  (Third)  of  Trusts  §94,
Comment d(1), at 7. 

ERISA embraces this tradition.  Sections 1132(a)(2) and 
(a)(3) authorize participants and beneficiaries to sue “in a 
representative capacity on behalf of the plan as a whole,” 
Russell, 473 U. S., at 142, n. 9, so that any “recovery” aris-
ing from the action “inures to the benefit of the plan as a