while the court may have spoken in dicta sbout govetnment backstops of prnsion plans, jimmy hoffa, says that they will be serving on the court when my gangster crntrsl states pension plan bankrupts the pbgc
crime pays well
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court curbed lawsuits alleging mismanagement of certain types of corporate pension plans and allowed immigrants facing deportation to claim in court that they will be tortured if sent home.
The rulings were among several decisions issued Monday as the justices began clearing their caseload during the final—and busiest—month of their current term.
In the pension case, the court ruled 5 to 4 along ideological lines that participants in U.S. Bancorp’s retirement plan couldn’t proceed with a putative class-action lawsuit alleging the bank’s pension managers violated their legal duties by making poor investment decisions.
Schumer, King, Teamsters push for bill to cover pensions
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) seek to issue treasury bonds tied to federal budget to fund Teamster pension shortfall. (Credit: Newsday / John Asbury)
The plaintiffs alleged the plan managers didn’t properly diversify investments to guard against stock-market risks and steered a sizable portion of the plan’s money to the bank’s own mutual funds, paying themselves excessive fees. The result, the pensioners alleged, was that the plan suffered roughly $750 million in avoidable losses during the great recession of 2008. The bank denied the allegations.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the high court’s conservative majority, said the decisive fact in the case was that the plaintiffs were in a defined-benefit plan in which they would receive a fixed payment each month that wouldn’t fluctuate based on the value of the plan. That meant they would continue to receive the same amount of money no matter whether they won or lost the case, he said.
“The plaintiffs have no concrete stake in this dispute” and therefore lack legal standing to bring the lawsuit, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
RELATED
- Supreme Court Extends Hunt for $3 Billion in Offshore Madoff Cash
- Supreme Court Upholds Puerto Rico Oversight Board
- Supreme Court Rejects Church Challenge to California’s Limits on In-Person Services During the Pandemic(May 30)
- Supreme Court Won’t Block Court Order to Slow Spread of Coronavirus in Federal Prison Where Nine Have Died (May 26)
- Supreme Court Grants Trump Request to Block Disclosure of Mueller Materials(May 20)
The majority said the plaintiffs hadn’t plausibly alleged that mismanagement of the plan was so egregious that it increased the risk that the bank would be unable to pay future retiree benefits. It also noted that the federal government serves as backstop when a defined-benefit plan fails.
The court’s liberal justices, in a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said, “It is hard to overstate the harmful consequences of the court’s conclusion.”
“After today’s decision, about 35 million people with defined-benefit plans will be vulnerable to fiduciary misconduct,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
The dissenters said the plaintiffs should have been allowed to sue because pensioners have a legal interest in the integrity of assets from which they receive their retirement payments. They said retirees also have a concrete legal interest in having investment managers act prudently, regardless of whether they suffer personal losses in the process.
Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Trump’s Financial Records
UP NEXT
0:00 / 4:13
Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Trump’s Financial Records
The Trump administration and advocacy groups including AARP had supported the pensioners in the case. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups representing employers had urged the court to disallow such lawsuits. (Thole v. U.S. Bank NA)
The deportation opinion, also written by Justice Kavanaugh, gave immigrants a lifeline to the federal courts if they feared torture in their home countries.
By a 7-2 vote, the court extended the power federal appeals courts have to review decisions by the Justice Department’s immigration-court system involving claims under the Convention Against Torture, a treaty signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified in 1994.
The treaty forbids removal of an individual to a country where he or she is likely to face torture because of race, religion, nationality, political belief or similar basis. But federal law also requires deportation after conviction for certain crimes and forbids U.S. courts from reviewing the facts underlying a “final order of removal.”
Nidal Khalid Nasrallah, 30 years old, came to the U.S. from Lebanon in 2006 and obtained a green card. In 2013, he was sentenced to a year in prison under a plea bargain after federal prosecutors accused him of buying 273 cases of stolen cigarettes worth nearly $600,000.
An immigration judge found that crime qualified Mr. Nasrallah for deportation, but that under the Torture Convention he couldn’t be removed to Lebanon. Mr. Nasrallah is a member of the Druze minority with Western ties, and the immigration judge found he was likely to be tortured by the Hezbollah organization, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist group.
After the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned that finding, Mr. Nasrallah appealed to a federal appeals court in Atlanta. But that court upheld Mr. Nasrallah’s deportation, finding that it had no power to consider the facts cited by the immigration appeals board. Other federal appeals courts are divided over the issue.
Justice Kavanaugh wrote that a determination under the Torture Convention is separate from a final removal order, and therefore fell within a federal court’s authority to review.
“Congress had good reason to distinguish the two,” he wrote, joined by the chief justice and Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan and Gorsuch. That, he said, was because the criminal convictions that trigger deportation previously had been litigated in court and rarely are disputed.
In contrast, the facts in torture claims are unlikely to have received court scrutiny, he said, ranging from “the noncitizen’s past experiences in the designated country of removal, to the noncitizen’s credibility, to the political or other current conditions in that country.” Nevertheless, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, the appeals court should be “highly deferential” to the immigration appeals board’s finding.
“An individual asserts a [Torture Convention] claim when they believe they are likely to be tortured or killed following deportation,” said Paul Hughes, who argued Mr. Nasrallah’s case. “This decision assures that overworked administrative agencies aren’t going to have the final word on life or death determinations.”
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito, dissented. (Nasrallah v. Barr)
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
No comments:
Post a Comment