Cite as: 508 U. S. 248 (1993)
White, J., dissenting
both fiduciaries and participating nonfiduciaries. Construing the statute in this manner also avoids the anomaly of interpreting ERISA so as to leave those Congress set out to protect—the participants in ERISA-governed plans and their beneficiaries—with "less protection . . . than they enjoyed before ERISA was enacted." Firestone, 489 U. S., at 114.2 Indeed, this is precisely how four Justices of this Court read § 502(a)(3)'s reference to "appropriate equitable relief" in Russell. See 473 U. S., at 154, and n. 10 (Brennan, J., joined by White, Marshall, and Blackmun, JJ., concurring in judgment).
II
The majority, however, struggles to find on the face of the statute evidence that § 502(a)(3) is to be more narrowly construed. First, it observes that ERISA elsewhere uses the terms "remedial relief" and "legal relief" and reasons that Congress must therefore have intended to differentiate between these concepts and "equitable relief." Second, it is noted that the crucial language of § 502(a)(3) describes the available relief as equitable relief. It is then asserted that "[s]ince all relief available for breach of trust could be obtained from a court of equity, limiting the sort of relief obtainable under § 502(a)(3) to 'equitable relief' in the sense of 'whatever relief a common-law court of equity could provide in such a case' would limit the relief not at all," rendering Congress' imposition of the modifier "equitable" a nullity. Ante, at 257 (emphasis in original). Searching for some way
2 Section 514(a) of ERISA pre-empts "any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan" governed by ERISA. 29 U. S. C. § 1144(a). Although the majority stops short of deciding the pre-emption implications of its holding, see ante, at 261, it is difficult to imagine how any common-law remedy for the harm alleged here—participation in a breach of fiduciary duty concerning an ERISA-governed plan—could have survived enactment of ERISA's " 'deliberately expansive' " pre-emption provision, Ingersoll-Rand Co. v. McClendon, 498 U. S. 133, 138 (1990) (citation omitted).
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