Tess Gee commented on the Supreme Court's ruling in Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton, which reversed the decisions of three federal appeals courts and found that religiously-affiliated hospitals can run their pension plans as church plans exempt from federal funding requirements. Under this ruling, pension plans can qualify for ERISA's religious exemption regardless of whether they're established by a church or another organization, but that doesn't mean the disputes over hospital workers' pension benefits have been resolved, Gee said. "This is a significant and hard-fought victory for the hospitals, but the dispute is far from over." Remaining questions include whether the hospitals' internal benefit committees qualify as "principal-purpose organizations" under the statute and whether specific hospital pension plans otherwise satisfy the statutory exemption's requirements, Gee said, and resolving these questions could require a close look at the factual circumstances of a given hospital and its plan.