Summary
Advocate Health Care Network operates hospitals, inpatient, and outpatient centers across northern and central Illinois. Since it is a religious ministry affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ, it is exempt from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which imposes various requirements on retirement plans.
But a group of employees filed a lawsuit arguing that Advocate’s pension plan should be subject to ERISA since Advocate Health is not a church itself. A federal district court incorrectly ruled that Advocate’s pension plan was not a “church plan” as defined in ERISA, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, threatening to subject the ministry’s retirement plans to federal restrictions.
Advocate Health appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Alliance Defending Freedom filed an amicus brief arguing that Congress adopted a broad view of “church plans” to respect religious autonomy, and government officials have no business deciding which organizations are or are not “sufficiently religious” to be treated like a church. In June 2017, the Supreme Court strengthened protections for religious freedom by ruling that retirement plans from Advocate Health and other church-affiliated organizations qualify for ERISA’s “church plan” exemption.
