Whether ERISA's anti-cutback rule prohibits plan trustees from eliminating participants' early retirement benefits through a reinterpretation of the plan

QUESTION PRESENTED “With few exceptions, the ‘anti-cutback’ rule of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) prohibits any amendment of a pension plan that would reduce an employee’s accrued benefits.” Central Laborers Pension Fund v. Heinz, 541 U.S. 739, 741 (2004) (citing ERISA Section 204(g), 29 U.S.C. 1054(g)). In Heinz, this Court held that the anticutback “rule prohibits an amendment expanding the categories of postretirement employment that triggers suspension of payment of early retirement benefits already accrued.” Ibid. Petitioners are seven participants in a collectively bargained, multi-employer pension plan that covers unionized steamfitters, plumbers, and heating and cooling service workers in western New York. Each applied for early retirement pension benefits after ceasing work in employment covered by the bargaining agreement and each began working in nondisqualifying employment as managers for employers who were parties to the collective bargaining agreement. As had been their uniform practice, the plan administrator and trustees approved these benefits knowing that petitioners were working in managerial positions for covered employers, and the plan paid petitioners these benefits for years thereafter. When the trustees decided that the plan should no longer pay these benefits, they did not first attempt to formally amend the plan; instead, they simply “reinterpreted” the term “retire” in the plan to disallow early retirement benefits for participants such as petitioners who intended to work as managers for covered employers. Only after “reinterpreting” the Plan did the trustees formally amend the plan to reflect the new requirement that plan participants must intend not to return (i) ll to work with any covered employer in order to receive early retirement benefits. Not only did the plan then cease payment of benefits to petitioners, but the trustees also demanded that petitioners repay the plan for the pension benefits petitioners had already received, with interest. The question presented is whether ERISA’s anticutback rule, 29 U.S.C. 1054(g), prohibits plan trustees and other plan sponsors from eliminating participants’ early retirement benefits through a reinterpretation of the plan to disallow previously permitted postretirement employment, thus accomplishing through a plan interpretation what they could not do through the plan’s formal amendment process.