514
Opinion of the Court
claimed simply "denial of benefits," or a virtually identical "breach of fiduciary duty?" See Brief for Chamber of Commerce as Amicus Curiae 10. Consider, too, they add, a medical review board trying to decide whether certain proposed surgery is medically necessary. Will the board's awareness of a "duty of loyalty" to the surgery-seeking beneficiary not risk inadequate attention to the countervailing, but important, need to constrain costs in order to preserve the plan's funds? Id., at 11.
Thus, amici warn that a legally enforceable duty of loyalty that extends beyond plan asset management to individual beneficiaries will risk these and other adverse consequences. Administrators will tend to interpret plan documents as requiring payments to individuals instead of trying to preserve plan assets; nonexpert courts will try to supervise too closely, and second guess, the often technical decisions of plan administrators; and, lawyers will complicate ordinary benefit claims by dressing them up in "fiduciary duty" clothing. The need to avoid these consequences, they conclude, requires us to accept Varity's position.
The concerns that amici raise seem to us unlikely to materialize, however, for several reasons. First, a fiduciary obligation, enforceable by beneficiaries seeking relief for themselves, does not necessarily favor payment over nonpayment. The common law of trusts recognizes the need to preserve assets to satisfy future, as well as present, claims and requires a trustee to take impartial account of the interests of all beneficiaries. See Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 183 (discussing duty of impartiality); id., § 232 (same).
Second, characterizing a denial of benefits as a breach of fiduciary duty does not necessarily change the standard a court would apply when reviewing the administrator's decision to deny benefits. After all, Firestone, which authorized deferential court review when the plan itself gives the administrator discretionary authority, based its decision upon
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