The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the case Cunningham v. Cornell University, allowing Cornell University employees to proceed with a class action lawsuit under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The workers alleged that their retirement plans were burdened with excessive fees and that the plan had purchased services from insiders. The Court held that plaintiffs do not need to preemptively disprove every possible exemption to liability to file a claim. Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored the unanimous opinion, which reversed the Second Circuit's decision. This ruling adopts a higher bar to dismiss ERISA claims and takes a worker-friendly view of ERISA’s prohibited transaction rules, reviving the challenge to the retirement plan’s service provider arrangements.