592
Opinion of the Court
statutory statement of trust obligations that must exist to obtain an exemption into (2) a statutory authorization to enforce trust obligations.5
Consistently with the text of § 302(c)(5), and the structure of § 302 in general, we view the "sole and exclusive benefit" and "held in trust" provisions of that paragraph as neither creating nor imposing a federal trust law standard, but rather as simply requiring a trust obligation for the specified purposes, defined and enforced originally under state law, see Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 170(1) (1959), and now under ERISA.6 Cf. Amax Coal, supra, at 329-330. Respondents do not deny that the Greater Funds are held subject to such a trust obligation. The fiduciaries of the Greater Funds are subject to the fiduciary obligations of ERISA, including the so-called exclusive benefit requirement of 29 U. S. C. § 1104(a)(1)(i), and are liable under 29 U. S. C. § 1109(a) to legal and equitable remedies for failure in those obligations. Since the Greater Funds are entities that qualify under § 302(c)(5), equitable relief under § 302(e) restraining future payments to them would not be appropriate.
5 Justice Stevensí concluding words are that our action today is "a radical departure from the doctrine of judicial restraint." Post, at 601. We have already refuted his claim that our ruling is reached uninvited and without benefit of argument. See supra, at 588-589, n. 2. His lack-of-restraint criticism seems principally directed, however, at our "departure from [the] understanding" of § 302(c)(5), post, at 601, reflected in the dicta of earlier cases—such as the excerpt that he quotes from Mine Workers Health and Retirement Funds v. Robinson, 455 U. S. 562, 573, n. 12 (1982) (Stevens, J.), see post, at 600. This seems to us a topsy-turvy version of judicial restraint. It was, if anything, those dicta themselves—uninvited, unargued, and unnecessary to the Court's holdings—which insulted that virtue; and we would add injury to insult by according them precedential effect.
6 Title 29 U. S. C. § 1104(a)(1) (1988 ed. and Supp. III) provides: "[A] fiduciary shall discharge his duties with respect to a plan solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries and—(A) for the exclusive purpose of: (i) providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries; and (ii) defraying reasonable expenses of administering the plan."
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