Intel Beats Class Suit Over Married Worker Pension Calculations

Intel Corp. defeated an 1,800-person class action challenging how it calculates pensions for certain married workers, after a California federal judge declined to read federal pension law as including a “reasonableness” requirement.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act requires that certain optional pension formats—including ones that make post-death payments to a worker’s surviving spouse—must be “actuarially equivalent” to a traditional, single-life pension, and courts disagree over whether this rule implicitly requires that benefits be calculated using actuarial assumptions that are “reasonable.” Judge Edward J. Davila declined to read such a requirement into the statutory text, awarding Intel summary judgment over ...