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Page Number: 10

8 

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

Opinion of the Court 

period of time.  But a bare allegation of plan underfunding 
does  not  itself  demonstrate  a  substantially  increased  risk 
that the plan and the employer would both fail.  Cf. LaRue, 
552 U. S., at 255 (“Misconduct by the administrators of a
defined benefit plan will not affect an individual’s entitle-
ment to a defined benefit unless it creates or enhances the 
risk of default by the entire plan”).2 

* 

* 

* 
Courts sometimes make standing law more complicated 
than it needs to be.  There is no ERISA exception to Article
III.  And under ordinary Article III standing analysis, the
plaintiffs  lack  Article  III  standing  for  a  simple,  com-
monsense  reason:  They  have  received  all  of  their  vested
pension benefits so far, and they are legally entitled to re-
ceive the same monthly payments for the rest of their lives.
Winning or losing this suit would not change the plaintiffs’ 
monthly pension benefits.  The plaintiffs have no concrete 
stake in this dispute and therefore lack Article III standing. 
We  affirm  the  judgment  of  the  U. S.  Court  of  Appeals  for
the Eighth Circuit. 

It is so ordered. 

—————— 

2 Even if a defined-benefit plan is mismanaged into plan termination,
the federal PBGC by law acts as a backstop and covers the vested pension
benefits  up  to  a  certain  amount  and  often  in  full.    For  example,  if  the 
plan and the employer in this case were to fail, the PBGC would be re-
quired to pay these two plaintiffs all of their vested pension benefits in
full.  See ERISA §§4022(a), (b), 29 U. S. C. §§1322(a), (b); Tr. of Oral Arg.
18–19; see also Congressional Research Service, Pension Benefit Guar-
anty  Corporation  (PBGC):  A  Primer  1  (2019);  PBGC,  General  FAQs
About  PBGC,  https://www.pbgc.gov/about/faq/general-faqs-about-pbgc. 
Any  increased-risk-of-harm  theory  of  standing  therefore  might  not  be
available for plan participants whose benefits are guaranteed in full by
the PBGC.  But we need not decide that question in this case.