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4 

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

Opinion of the Court 

have not suffered (and will not suffer) any monetary losses.
The  basic  flaw  in  the  plaintiffs’  trust-based  theory  of
standing is that the participants in a defined-benefit plan
are not similarly situated to the beneficiaries of a private 
trust or to the participants in a defined-contribution plan. 
See Varity Corp. v. Howe, 516 U. S. 489, 497 (1996) (trust
law informs but does not control interpretation of ERISA).
In the private trust context, the value of the trust property 
and the ultimate amount of money received by the benefi-
ciaries will typically depend on how well the trust is man-
aged, so every penny of gain or loss is at the beneficiaries’ 
risk.  By contrast, a defined-benefit plan is more in the na-
ture of a contract.  The plan participants’ benefits are fixed 
and  will  not  change,  regardless  of  how  well  or  poorly  the
plan is managed.  The benefits paid to the participants in a
defined-benefit  plan  are  not  tied  to  the  value  of  the  plan.
Moreover, the employer, not plan participants, receives any 
surplus left over after all of the benefits are paid; the em-
ployer, not plan participants, is on the hook for plan short-
falls.  See  Beck,  551  U. S.,  at  98–99.    As  this  Court  has 
stated  before,  plan  participants  possess  no  equitable  or 
property interest in the plan.  See Hughes Aircraft Co., 525 
U. S., at 439–441; see also LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg & As-
sociates, Inc., 552 U. S. 248, 254–256 (2008).  The trust-law 
analogy therefore does not fit this case and does not support
Article  III  standing  for  plaintiffs  who  allege  mismanage-
ment of a defined-benefit plan. 

Second, Thole and Smith assert standing as representa-
tives of the plan itself.  But in order to claim “the interests 
of others, the litigants themselves still must have suffered 
an injury in fact, thus giving” them “a sufficiently concrete
interest  in  the  outcome  of  the  issue  in  dispute.”  Hol-
lingsworth v. Perry, 570 U. S. 693, 708 (2013) (internal quo-
tation marks omitted); cf. Gollust v. Mendell, 501 U. S. 115, 
125–126 (1991) (suggesting that shareholder must “main-