Athene Pension Buyout Lawsuits: Courts Split 4 to 3 on Standing as of November 9, 2026

What these cases are, and what they are not

In a pension risk transfer an employer uses plan assets to buy group annuity contracts from an insurer, and the insurer takes over the monthly payments. The Colorado court describes it this way: the employer “purchases group annuity contracts with plan assets from an insurer, who then assumes the responsibility for future benefit payments to employees and retirees covered by the transaction.” ERISA expressly allows it. In these seven cases, groups of retirees say the employer or its independent fiduciary picked an insurer that was riskier than other bidders to save money. Athene itself is not a defendant in the ones we read: a Gibson Dunn alert says Athene is “a private equity-backed insurance provider (Athene), which is not named as a defendant.”

Everything in the tables is what a court wrote or what a complaint alleges, as the opinion describes it. We write “a group of retirees” because the named plaintiffs are private individuals. We do not count lawsuits over pension buyouts to other insurers; a 2026 Thompson Hine review counted 13 pension risk transfer class actions in all, of which “only one … was filed during 2025,” and it includes a case over a Verizon transfer (dismissed January 8, 2026 for lack of standing) that we have not confirmed involved Athene and do not count.

The seven cases

Source: opinions of the courts named, retrieved from govinfo.gov (the Lockheed Martin, Alcoa, AT&T, General Electric, ATI and Lumen cases); Bristol-Myers Squibb details from other courts’ opinions citing it, the Second Circuit docket number and a 13-state amicus brief filed there on July 21, 2026; AT&T filing date and size from the plaintiffs’ counsel’s case page; ATI size from a Nixon Peabody alert of August 7, 2026. The Bristol-Myers Squibb district opinion itself was not available to us in full text.

What the courts held on standing

Standing is the question of whether the retirees have been harmed enough to sue in federal court. The Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Thole v. U.S. Bank held that members of a defined benefit plan who keep getting their fixed monthly payments cannot sue over how the plan was run, and that “there is no ERISA exception to Article III.” Every court in these cases starts there. They differ on whether buying an annuity from a riskier insurer is a harm of its own.

Source: the opinions named; quotations are verbatim from the saved text. The Bristol-Myers Squibb row is a quotation of that decision as printed in the ATI opinion.

Two points a retiree may miss. First, a dismissal for lack of standing is without prejudice: the ATI court said the dismissal “is without prejudice because it is on standing grounds,” and the Alcoa court, in denying the retirees’ request to reopen, noted that the retirees did not argue any deadline would stop them filing a new action. Second, the ATI court recorded what the retirees alleged about Athene, taking it as true: that it “ranks 695 of 698 active insurers on a critical metric of claim paying ability” and holds risky assets on a thin surplus. Those are allegations in a complaint, not findings by any court.

What the courts held on prudence

Four courts stopped at standing, so only some opinions reach the fiduciary question. Those that do point in different directions.

• Lockheed Martin (D. Md.): the court held selecting an annuity provider is a fiduciary act, citing the regulation that the plan administrator “must select the insurer in accordance with the fiduciary standards,” and held a prudence claim plausible: “the Court infers that Lockheed was either acting in its own self-interest or failed to make a reasonable investigation into Athene’s risk of default.” It denied the motion to dismiss on that count at the pleading stage.
• Bristol-Myers Squibb (S.D.N.Y.): we could not read the district opinion, but the AT&T court cites it as a case in which a claim “survived motion to dismiss because defendants knew that SSGA breached its fiduciary duty.”
• AT&T (D. Mass.): on September 28, 2026 the court declined to decide at this stage which risk measure is better, writing that identifying other providers available for the AT&T transfer and comparing them to Athene “is a factual analysis best resolved at a later stage of the litigation.” It let Count IV (prudence) stand but rejected the retirees’ objection that AT&T itself chose Athene: AT&T “hired SSGA as its independent fiduciary to choose an annuity provider,” and buying the annuities at SSGA’s direction, “without more,” was not enough to infer AT&T’s liability.
• Lumen, ATI, GE and Alcoa: the Lumen court wrote that it would “decline to address” the failure-to-state-a-claim arguments after finding no standing, and the others dismissed on standing.

A Nixon Peabody alert of August 7, 2026 puts the state of the law this way: “No court in this line has decided what the ‘safest annuity available’ requires.” We found no contrary opinion.

The appeals

Source: Lockheed Martin certification order (July 22, 2025); retirees v. Lumen opinion (September 1, 2026) for the Bristol-Myers Squibb certification date; Nixon Peabody alert (August 7, 2026); Thompson Hine summary; brief of Iowa and 12 additional states, Second Circuit No. 26-1021, filed July 21, 2026. Appellate dockets and the Department of Labor briefs were not available to us, so those items rest on the secondary sources named.

What changes for a retiree after a buyout

Source: court opinions named and Athene Holding Ltd’s 2025 10-K (accession 0001527469-26-000013). The Alcoa opinion describes the state-association limit as one that “only provides coverage up to limits set by state law.”

After a buyout the PBGC guarantee no longer applies and a state guaranty association covers the annuity up to its limit. Our table of limits is on the annuity state guaranty limits page, and the federal ceiling that applied before the buyout is on the PBGC maximum guarantee page.

Where a pension can pass the $250,000 line (our arithmetic)

The guaranty limit is stated as a present value, not a monthly amount. As a rough illustration only, we multiply the 417(e) minimum lump-sum factor from our pension lump sum page, $137,886 of lump sum for each $1,000 a month of single-life pension at 65 under the September 2026 rates, by the monthly benefit. A guaranty association uses its own statute’s present-value method, so the real figure for any person will differ.

Source: our arithmetic, $137.886 times the monthly pension in dollars; the $250,000, $300,000 and $500,000 columns are the limits in our guaranty-limits table, which varies by state. Not a statement of anyone’s coverage.

The ATI court listed this as one of the steps that would all have to occur before a retiree lost money: the insurer would have to fail, mitigation and alternative funding would have to fail, and the retiree’s benefits would have to exceed the state limit. The court also noted that the four insurers the retirees cited as comparable failures were not alleged to have actually defaulted on annuity payments after regulators took over.

What the Department of Labor has said

The rule behind the lawsuits is 29 CFR 2509.95-1, known as Interpretive Bulletin 95-1. It says that choosing an annuity provider “is a fiduciary decision” and that fiduciaries “must take steps calculated to obtain the safest annuity available, unless under the circumstances it would be in the interests of participants and beneficiaries to do otherwise.” It lists six factors to evaluate, the last being “the availability of additional protection through state guaranty associations and the extent of their guarantees.” It adds that “Reliance solely on ratings provided by insurance rating services would not be sufficient,” that fiduciaries lacking expertise “would need to obtain the advice of a qualified, independent expert,” and that “more than one annuity provider is able to offer the safest annuity available.”

Section 321 of the SECURE 2.0 Act required the Department to review the bulletin. Its report to Congress, dated June 24, 2024, says the Department held “more than 40 stakeholder meetings” and that six members of the ERISA Advisory Council supported no changes while the other nine supported different positions. It concludes that “EBSA is not prepared at this time to propose amendments to the Interpretive Bulletin to address this area of potential risk,” that “Any such changes will be preceded by public notice and comment,” and that “EBSA rejects the view that the settlor’s decision to engage in a pension risk transfer means that the plan’s fiduciary, in implementing that decision, may be indifferent to the substitution of PBGC coverage with SGA coverage or the extent of the state guarantees.” It also quotes a Treasury letter saying that for pension risk transfers “further examination regarding trade-offs from the loss of PBGC backing may be warranted,” and reports record 2022 pension risk transfer annuity purchases of $52 billion in premiums.

Athene’s pension business, from its 10-K

Athene Holding Ltd files with the SEC (CIK 1527469). Its 10-K for 2025, filed February 25, 2026 (accession 0001527469-26-000013), says it entered the pension group annuity market in 2017 and “closed 50 deals resulting in the issuance or reinsurance of group annuities of $53.4 billion with more than 528,000 plan participants as of December 31, 2025.” The filing does not name the lawsuits in this article.

Source: Athene Holding Ltd, Form 10-K for 2025 (accession 0001527469-26-000013). Total net reserve liabilities were $271,233 million at December 31, 2025. We found no Athene 10-Q for the third quarter of 2026 on EDGAR as of November 9, 2026. For Athene’s parent and its other numbers see our Apollo and Athene page.

The premiums fell from $10,374 million in 2023 to $752 million in 2025 (our arithmetic: a drop of 92.8%). All seven cases carry 2024 docket numbers and concern transfers that closed between 2018 and 2023. We draw no link between the two.

Before you decide

• Find the paperwork you were sent. The Department’s 2024 report said disclosure to participants after a partial buyout deserves further consideration. Look for the insurer’s name, the date it took over and the contract or certificate number.
• Find the guaranty limit that applies to you. Look up your state in our table and compare it with the present value of your pension, not the monthly amount.
• Do not assume a dismissal means Athene is safe or unsafe. A standing ruling says only that the court thought the retirees had not shown enough harm to sue, or had.
• Watch the two appeals. The first circuit court to rule will carry weight for the rest of the country.

What a reader can do with this

1. Look up your employer in the table above. If it is not one of the seven, the lawsuits in this article do not concern your plan; the transfer notice will name your insurer.
2. If your pension was bought out, estimate its present value (the lump sum page shows the method) and compare it with your state’s guaranty limit.
3. If you chose a survivor option, remember that the spouse’s benefit moves to the insurer too; our joint and survivor page explains the options.
4. Keep the court case numbers above. The Fourth Circuit (No. 25-2061) and Second Circuit (No. 26-1021) decisions will be the first appellate word.

FAQ

Sources, read and saved on November 9, 2026: opinions and orders in retirees v. Lockheed Martin Corp. (D. Md., March 28 and July 22, 2025), retirees v. Alcoa USA Corp. (D.D.C., March 28, 2025 and February 24, 2026), retirees v. AT&T Inc. (D. Mass., September 30, 2025 and September 28, 2026), retirees v. General Electric Co. (N.D.N.Y., September 24, 2025), retirees v. ATI, Inc. (W.D. Pa., October 7, 2025 and July 27, 2026) and retirees v. Lumen Technologies, Inc. (D. Colo., September 3, 2025 and September 1, 2026), all from govinfo.gov; the brief of Iowa and 12 additional states in retirees v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Second Circuit No. 26-1021 (July 21, 2026); 29 CFR 2509.95-1 (eCFR); U.S. Department of Labor, Report to Congress on Interpretive Bulletin 95-1 (June 24, 2024); Athene Holding Ltd Form 10-K for 2025 (accession 0001527469-26-000013); Gibson Dunn client alert (April 18, 2025); Thompson Hine and Nixon Peabody alerts (2026); Edward Stone Law case page for the AT&T case. Dollar illustrations are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.