Employee qualms about ‘risky’ retirement fund underperform at Supreme Court
The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case brought by Intel employees who say the company's retirement plan fiduciaries violated federal law by quietly shifting a supposedly balanced fund into hedge funds and private equity. The Ninth Circuit had tossed their suit for failing to name a benchmark with similar goals to Intel's fund, and the justices across the bench appeared ready to agree.
Justices Thomas, Kagan, Barrett and Alito each pressed the employees on what a fair comparison would even look like, settling into an extended apples-to-oranges exchange that produced more horticultural detail than legal clarity. The employees argued the court shouldn't predefine what counts as a meaningful benchmark, warning it was a standard that would be nearly impossible to satisfy whenever fiduciaries made unusual investment choices.
By the argument's second half, the justices were effectively workshopping favorable opinion language with the fiduciaries' own attorney, debating phrasing with Barrett offering two drafts herself. The employees' attorney closed with a direct warning against the court trying to define 'meaningful' in advance, calling it a project doomed to fail.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.