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Judge issues second decision upholding Biden ESG labor rule (2025)
| Environmental, social, and corporate governance |
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| • What is ESG? • Enacted ESG legislation • Arguments for and against ESG • Opposition to ESG • Federal ESG rules • ESG legislation tracker • Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's weekly ESG newsletter |
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk upheld the Biden administration’s Labor Department rule allowing the use of ESG investment considerations in ERISA-governed retirement plans for a second time. The decision again rejected the legal challenge from 26 Republican attorneys general.
Kacsmaryk’s decision upheld the Biden administration’s Labor Department rule without relying on Chevron deference, which was the legal basis of the original ruling.
Kacsmaryk first ruled in favor of the ESG regulation in September 2023. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals instructed him to reconsider the case in July 2024 after the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturned the legal precedent known as Chevron deference.
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The states argued that the 2022 rule violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, which requires retirement plan administrators to act solely in the interest of participants in the plan. The Republican-led states said it did so by allowing such plans to consider non-financial factors. They said the rule if allowed to stand would jeopardize millions of Americans' retirement savings. … Kacsmaryk in Friday's decision concluded that "the rule is not contrary to ERISA under a post-Chevron analysis," saying arguments to the contrary embodied "wooden textualism that courts should endeavor to avoid."[1] |
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See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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