Court Opinion

ID: 9431567
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:35.226351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:29.064763
License: Public Domain

*119Justice Scalia,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join the judgment of the Court and Parts I and II of its opinion. I agree with its disposition but not all of its reasoning regarding Part III.
The Court holds that a person with a colorable claim is one who “ ‘may become eligible’ for benefits” within the meaning of the statutory definition of “participant,” because, it reasons, such a claim raises the possibility that “he or she will prevail in a suit for benefits.” Ante, at 117. The relevant portion of the definition, however, refers to an employee “who is or may become eligible to receive a benefit.” There is an obvious parallelism here: one “may become” eligible by acquiring, in the future, the same characteristic of eligibility that someone who “is” eligible now possesses. And I find it contrary to normal usage to think that the characteristic of “being” eligible consists of “having prevailed in a suit for benefits.” Eligibility exists not merely during the brief period between formal judgment of entitlement and payment of benefits. Rather, one is eligible whether or not he has yet been adjudicated to be — and, similarly, one can become eligible before he is adjudicated to be. It follows that the phrase “may become eligible” has nothing to do with the probabilities of winning a suit. I think that, properly read, the definition of “participant” embraces those whose benefits have vested, and those who (by reason of current or former employment) have some potential to receive the vesting of benefits in the future, but not those who have a good argument that benefits have vested even though they have not.
Applying the definition in this fashion would mean, of course, that if the employer guesses right that a person with a colorable claim is in fact not entitled to benefits, he can deny that person the information required to be provided under 29 U. S. C. § 1024(b)(4) without paying the $100-a-day damages assessable for breach of that obligation, 29 U. S. C. § 1132(c)(1)(B) (1982 ed., Supp. IV). Since, however, no em*120ployer sensible enough to consult the law would be senseless enough to take that risk, giving the term its defined meaning would produce precisely the same incentive for disclosure as the Court’s opinion.