U.S. Supreme Court Votes In Favor Of Advocate Health Care On Pension Issue

DOWNERS GROVE, IL — On Monday, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided that religiously affiliated hospitals are exempt from following a federal law set to safeguard employee pensions. The decision extends to other religiously affiliated hospitals throughout the country and will affect countless employees.

The Supreme Court ruling allows hospitals with religious affiliations to be exempt from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which means they are not required to pay premiums to ensure and help fund employee pension plans. According to the Department of Labor website, “ERISA does not cover group health plans established or maintained by governmental entities, churches for their employees.”

The case was initially brought up in 2014 by employees and former employees who asserted that their pensions were underfunded challenged Advocate’s claim that they fell under the “church plan” designated in ERISA. Employees had protested that the ERISA “church plan” was not intended for larger hospital systems, Chicago Tribune reports. Advocate Health Care and two other nonprofit hospitals with religious ties appealed the decisions of three lower federal appeals courts that had ruled in favor of the hospital employees, according to CBS News.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred with the court’s decision, but wrote that she was “troubled by the outcome of [such] cases.” She added, “These organizations thus bear little resemblance to those Congress considered when enacting the 1980 amendment to the church plan definition.”

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