Compliance Stuff

As the Supreme Court prepares for its next term to begin October 6, let’s look back on all the SCOTUS cases from the past year that impacted your workplace, industry, and litigation exposure. Here’s a quick guide to 12 times this year that four small words –  it is so ordered  – created sweeping implications for your business, along with a rating for how impactful each decision will be for employers. Note:  We’ll be publishing a preview of the 2025-2026 SCOTUS term in the first week of October. Make sure you’re subscribed to  Fisher Phillips’ Insight Systems  to ensure you get it delivered to your inbox. 1. Major Limit on District Courts’ Injunction Power Case :  Trump v. CASA  (June 27, 2025) Vote Count:  6-3 Ruling:  Federal district court judges may not issue injunctions that are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue. Employer Impact Score:  High Employer Impact:  Plaintiffs will...

  The federal government may continue to enforce the Affordable Care Act’s preventive-care mandates, thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in   Kennedy v. Braidwood Management . In a 6-3 bipartisan opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, SCOTUS rejected constitutional challenges brought by a Texas business and others to the structure of a federal health task force that, as SCOTUS put it, issues “preventive-service recommendations of critical importance to patients, doctors, insurers, employers, healthcare organizations, and the American people more broadly.”   But could the Court’s rationale make the coverage rules more susceptible to political influence? Here’s what employers and plan sponsors need to know about the June 27 decision and how it could impact group health plans. The ACA’s Preventive-Care Mandates and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force ACA Requirements.  The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires most group health plans to cover certain...

In a win for plan sponsors, the recently enacted  Employer Reporting Improvement Act  and the  Paperwork Burden Reduction Act  (the Acts), among other things, introduce several significant changes to the reporting and enforcement rules of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The Current Rules Forms 1095-B and 1095-C:   U nder the ACA, plan sponsors, specifically Applicable Large Employers (ALEs), must report information about the health coverage they offer to their employees.  This ACA reporting is done through Forms 1095-B and 1095-C, which must be filed with the IRS and provided to all full-time employees and employees receiving employer-sponsored coverage. (This is the case, even though the ACA’s individual mandate is currently set to $0, and therefore functionally isn’t being enforced.) Key aspects of ACA enforcement also include: A Tight Turnaround to Respond to Proposed Assessments : The IRS may assess employer shared responsibility payments (ES...

  On Labor Day 50 years ago, President Gerald Ford signed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) into law. ERISA , a long time in the making, has had notable successes—but also has led to much litigation and perhaps even contributed to the decline of pension plans. Congress drafted and revised the law after Studebaker closed its plant in South Bend, Ind., in 1963 and left many employees without the pensions they had been promised. ERISA has “accomplished much of what it set out to do,” said Lou Mazawey, an attorney with Groom Law Group in Washington, D.C. “Without ERISA, there would be far fewer workers with retirement savings and far fewer workers with robust health insurance,” said Juliana Reno, an attorney with Venable in New York City. However, ERISA also has become a weapon for plaintiffs’ attorneys to wield against retirement plan administrators and others in court. “We have seen in the past 10 years an explosion of litigation challenging the fees and investment...