Excluding workers from benefit plans - conflicting guidance from the courts.
Summary
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found in Vizcaino v. Microsoft Corp. that freelance workers were entitled to participate in benefit plans, but other case law is split on such issues. Two other cases also rewrote the plan language to provide leased employees with coverage. In several other cases, the courts accepted plan language that excluded certain categories of workers. Employers should review plan language to ensure that workers that the employers do not wish to cover are expressly excluded.
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Excluding workers from benefit plans - conflicting guidance from the courts.
Employers maintaining benefit plans intended to exclude a specific category of workers should be reviewing plan documents and administrative procedures in light of recent judicial guidance. The Ninth Circuit's initial decision in Vizcaino v. Microsoft Corp., 97 F3d 1187 (9th Cir. 1996), and other ...
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