Utah v. Chavez-DeRemer

In an appeal of a district court decision upholding a 2022 final rule that allows Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) fiduciaries to consider “collateral benefits” such as environment, social, and governance (ESG) factors “when deciding between competing investment options that each equally served the beneficiaries’ financial interests,” the federal government informed the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on May 28, 2025 that the U.S. Department of Labor had decided to “engage in a new rulemaking on the subject of the challenged rule.” The government said the rulemaking would be included in the Labor Department’s Spring Regulatory Agenda and that “the Department intends to move through the rulemaking process as expeditiously as possible.”

On April 28, the Fifth Circuit granted the motion “but for 30 days only” and stated that it would “not permit an open-ended abeyance.” The Fifth Circuit directed the Department of Labor to inform the court within 30 days about what “specific actions the Department will take, if any, as a result of its reconsideration of the challenged rule—either to maintain the rule or to rescind it.”

On April 21, 2025, the U.S. Department of Labor asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to hold in abeyance an appeal from a district court’s February 2025 decision upholding a 2022 final rule that allows Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) fiduciaries to consider “collateral benefits” such as environment, social, and governance (ESG) factors “when deciding between competing investment options that each equally served the beneficiaries’ financial interests.” The Department of Labor informed the court that it had determined “that it intends to reconsider the challenged rule, including by considering whether to rescind the rule.”

In an appeal of a district court judgment upholding a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) investment duties regulation that allowed employee benefit plan fiduciaries to consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors such as climate change in risk and return analyses, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the judgment and remanded to the district court for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the Supreme Court “discarded” the “decades-old Chevron deference doctrine.” The Fifth Circuit described vacatur and remand of a district court judgment in the context of intervening Supreme Court precedent as “a modest and relatively uncontroversial practice” that is “a basic feature of our judicial hierarchy.” The Fifth Circuit concluded that the “slight delay” that would result from remanding to the district court would better serve the appellate court and the circuit at large.