Earlier this month the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Bolton v. Inland Fresh Seafood Corp. of Am., Inc.,No. 24-10084, 2026 WL 3056461 (11th Cir. Oct. 13, 2026), repealed the administrative remedies exhaustion requirement for Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) statutory claims set forth in Mason v. Cont’l Grp., Inc., 763 F.2d 1219 (11th Cir. 1985).
The administrative remedies exhaustion requirement refers generally to the processes set forth by the terms of a benefit plan that a potential claimant must first follow to seek review of their claim prior to filing suit in federal court under ERISA. The purpose of the exhaustion requirement is to prevent a court from prematurely interfering with the plan’s decision-making process – allowing plan administrators the chance to correct errors, apply consistent interpretation of the terms of the plan, apply the expertise and discretion they have in managing plan assets, avoid excessive judicial intervention, and assemble a full factual record in the event court intervention is required. See Commc’ns Workers of Am. v. Am. Tel. & Tel. Co., 40 F.3d 426, 432 (D.C. Cir. 1994).
Though ERISA (as well as subsequent Department of Labor regulations) requires plans to provide a process for participants to obtain a full and fair review of the plan’s decision adjudicating their claim, ERISA does not explicitly require claimants to exhaust a plan’s internal administrative remedies. Instead, this requirement has been applied as a matter of judicial discretion.
What the 11th Circuit Held in ‘Bolton’
In Bolton, a group of seafood workers appealed a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia dismissing their proposed class action alleging mismanagement of an employee stock ownership plan. The workers alleged violations of 29 U.S.C. §§ 1132(a)(2) and 1132(a)(3), claiming that defendants breached their fiduciary duties by causing the plan and participants to overpay for common stock and that the plan’s trustee failed to conduct proper diligence before settling on the purchase price. The District Court ultimately dismissed the workers’ claims, reasoning that Mason required administrative exhaustion for these ERISA statutory claims.
On review, the Eleventh Circuit, en banc, expressly overruled Mason and the rule requiring administrative exhaustion for ERISA statutory claims as an “atextual product of judicial creation based solely on policy reasons.” Bolton, 2026 WL 3056461 at *4. Aside from its doctrinal reasoning, the Eleventh Circuit noted that removing its administrative exhaustion requirement for ERISA statutory claims would conform with seven other circuits – the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth and D.C. Id. at *7. The only remaining outlier circuit would be the Seventh, whose exhaustion rule for ERISA statutory claims is not mandatory. Id. at *9 (citing Lindemann v. Mobil Oil Corp., 79 F.3d 647, 650 (7th Cir. 1996)).
The Distinction Between Statutory and Denial-of-Benefits Claims
The Eleventh Circuit was careful to note in its opinion that its holding was limited to whether ERISA requires administrative exhaustion for statutory claims. The Eleventh Circuit explicitly stated that it did not address cases requiring exhaustion where a plaintiff is challenging the denial of benefits under the terms of a plan governed by ERISA. Bolton, 2026 WL 3056461 at *5, n.1.
The courts recognize a distinction between ERISA statutory claims and claims for the wrongful denial of benefits, particularly where administrative exhaustion is required. While the Eleventh Circuit joins the vast majority of circuits in dropping the administrative exhaustion requirement for ERISA statutory claims, there is uniformity among the circuits that a potential claimant must exhaust administrative remedies when claiming the wrongful denial of plan benefits under ERISA, with limited exceptions.
What To Expect Moving Forward – More Attempts To Recast Claims as Those for Denial of Benefits
Without the ability to seek dismissal of ERISA statutory claims for the failure to exhaust administrative remedies in the Eleventh Circuit, employer-side attorneys may find it advantageous to consider whether a plaintiff’s statutory claims are really disguised denial-of-benefits claims (or otherwise duplicative of the denial-of-benefits claims a plaintiff might already be alleging). See Rochow v. Life Insurance Co. of North America,780 F.3d 364, 372 (6th Cir. 2015) (en banc) (holding plaintiff’s claim for benefits under § 1132(a)(1)(B) prevented plaintiff from also recovering for breach of fiduciary duty related to denial of benefits under § 1132(a)(3), and clarifying that a breach of fiduciary duty claim would only be appropriate where it is based on an injury separate and distinct from the denial of benefits); see also Diamond v. Local 807 Labor Mgmt. Pension Fund, 595 F. App’x 22, 25 (2d Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 2806 (2015) (upholding the dismissal of an alleged breach of fiduciary duty claim because, as alleged, the claim required interpretation of plan documents despite “framing the claim as a statutory violation”). If the argument can be made that proposed statutory claims are, at their essence, claims for benefits, then they should go through the administrative claim process under the applicable plan in accordance with existing case law. Plaintiff-side attorneys, by contrast, may be able to point to the opinion in Bolton to further the argument that the text is on their side, and may seek to revive arguments that ERISA contains no affirmative requirement to exhaust administrative remedies for denial-of-benefits claims and, therefore, that courts should dispense with that judicial invention. Given the long-standing and widely accepted precedent applying the exhaustion requirement to denial-of-benefits cases, it would be an uphill battle.
