Religious hospitals don't have to comply with federal laws protecting pension plans, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a case that affects retirement benefits for roughly a million workers nationwide, the Associated Press reported. The justices sided with three church-affiliated nonprofit hospital systems being sued for underfunding their employee pension plans. The hospitals — two with Catholic affiliation and one with Lutheran ties — had argued that their pensions are "church plans" that are exempt from the law and have been treated as such for decades by federal officials. Workers asserted that Congress never meant to exempt massive hospital systems that employ tens of thousands of workers. They said the hospitals are dodging legal safeguards that could jeopardize their benefits. Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said that a pension plan operated by a religiously affiliated hospital is exempt from the law "regardless of who established it."
