Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1712_0971.pdf
Page Number: 36

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

23 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

forbids retirees to remedy or prevent fiduciary breaches in
federal court until their retirement plan or employer is on
the brink of financial ruin.  See ante, at 7–8.  This is a re-
markable  result,  and  not  only  because  this  case  is
bookended by two financial crises.  There is no denying that 
the Great Recession contributed to the plan’s massive losses 
and statutory underfunding, or that the present pandemic
punctuates  the  perils  of  imprudent  and  disloyal  financial 
management.

Today’s result also disrupts the purpose of ERISA and the
trust funds it requires.  Trusts have trustees and fiduciary
duties to protect the assets and the beneficiaries from the 
vicissitudes of fortune.  Fiduciary duties, especially loyalty, 
are  potent  prophylactic  rules  that  restrain  trustees 
“tempted to exploit [a] trust.”  Bogert & Bogert §543.  Con-
gress thus recognized that one of the best ways to protect 
retirement  plans  was  to  codify  the  same  fiduciary  duties
and  beneficiary-enforcement  powers  that  have  existed  for 
centuries.  E.g.,  29  U. S. C.  §§1001(b),  1109,  1132.    Along 
those lines, courts once held fiduciaries to a higher stand-
ard: “Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the
most sensitive.”  Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N. Y. 458, 464, 
164 N. E. 545, 546 (1928) (Cardozo, C. J.).  Not so today.

Nor can petitioners take comfort in the so-called “regu-
latory  phalanx”  guarding  defined-benefit  plans  from  mis-
management.  Ante,  at  7.    Having  divested  ERISA  of  en-
forceable fiduciary duties and beneficiaries of their right to
sue,  the  Court  lists  “employers  and  their  shareholders,”
other fiduciaries, and the “Department of Labor” as parties 
on whom retirees should rely.  Ante, at 6–7.  But there are 
serious holes in the Court’s proffered line of defense.

The Court’s proposed solutions offer nothing in a case like
this one.  The employer, its shareholders, and the plan’s co-
fiduciaries here have no reason to bring suit because they 
either committed or profited from the misconduct.  Recall