January 2025 Newsletter

OUR NEXT MEETING IS

FEBRUART 4TH!

LUNCH SPONSOR:

TBD

Dear ABA Members,

Happy New Year! 2025 promises to be a challenging year for labor and its benefit funds. We’re facing an incoming national administration that did not prove itself worker and union-friendly the last time around; we’re facing numerous state legislative and regulatory initiatives throughout the US, including in NY and NJ, purporting to rein in PBMs but also having dire consequences for ERISA-governed benefit funds, by further eroding the protection of ERISA’s preemption clause; and the ever-increasing costs of healthcare, among other challenges. Did I say “Happy New Year?” Well, we’re used to challenges, and, together, we can meet them, no? The ABA, individually and through its affiliation with the NLA, has brought legislative and regulatory initiatives of concern to its members asking for your advocacy; has filed or cosigned several amicus briefs on various issues in support of union benefit funds and will continue to advocate for our interests; and we will continue to bring you timely and informative speakers to help us address the challenges we face in administering our benefit funds.

Since our last newsletter, we’ve enjoyed hosting ABA members in San Diego at our Annual Brunch and we’re proud to have honored President Sean McGarvey at the ABA Annual Reception at the beautiful St. Regis New York. President McGarvey spoke passionately about the trade union movement and the role administrators play in improving the lives of their members. Below are a few photos from both events as well as articles from our September presenters.

Special thanks to our presenters! We would also like to thank Cancer Navigator and Adam Bradley for sponsoring the September meeting.

First up, we share a very important message from our associate member Scott Foglietta on how the ABA joined forces with others to support rights in Supreme Court cases.

In Solidarity,

The Board of the Association of Benefit Administrators

ABA’s Support Helps Preserve Investor Rights in Supreme Court Cases

We write to share news of some excellent new developments that protect the rights of benefits funds as investors in public markets. This past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear appeals in In re Facebook, Inc. Securities Litigation and E. Ohman J:or Fonder v. NVIDIA, two securities class actions in which proud ABA supporter Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP serves as Lead Counsel. The ABA was pleased to joined with other associations and institutional investors to support the rights of investors in both cases.

Each of these cases threatened investors’ abilities to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable. In Facebook, investors allege that Facebook’s risk warnings—which discussed the possible risks Facebook faced from misuse of its users data—were misleading because they talked about those risks as just being possibilities when Facebook and its senior executives knew that misuse of user data was actually happening in connection with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. After the district court dismissed the case, the Ninth Circuit reversed, finding that the investors had a legally recognizable claim that the risk warning statements were misleading. The Facebook defendants appealed the Ninth Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court, seeking an order preventing investors in Facebook and other cases from suing based on such statements.

In the NVIDIA case, investors allege that NVIDIA concealed its dependence on cryptocurrency mining during the cryptocurrency bull market in 2017-2018. In NVIDIA, as in Facebook, the district court dismissed the case and the Ninth Circuit reinstated it. The NVIDIA defendants sought Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision, asking for an order that would make it significantly harder for investors to plead securities fraud by (i) requiring them to include details that often can only be found in internal company documents, and (ii) preventing them from utilizing expert analysis in their complaints.

In November, the Supreme Court heard argument in both cases. In the past few weeks, it unanimously dismissed each appeal, letting stand each case’s investor-friendly Ninth Circuit opinion. The Supreme Court dismissed each case as “improvidently granted,” meaning that, after reviewing the briefs and conducting oral argument, it determined that neither case should have been brought up for Supreme Court review in the first place. While the decisions were each just one line long, their impact is very significant, as they preserve significant avenues through which investors seek to hold companies and their executives accountable for fraud.

If you have any questions about the ABA’s amicus efforts or the impact the Supreme Court’s decisions have on your rights as an investor, feel free to contact Bernstein Litowitz partner and ABA associate member Scott Foglietta at scott.foglietta@blbglaw.com.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR SEPTEMBER MEETING

Ryan Chapman
Vice President, Sales HealthCare Strategies

Ryan discussing how Benefits Administrators can determine the cost savings of their plan, current state of market, and tools to improve efficiency of the plan.

Read the Article

Download the presentation