516
Thomas, J., dissenting
Justice Thomas, with whom Justice O'Connor and Justice Scalia join, dissenting.
In Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Russell, 473 U. S. 134 (1985), we held that actions for fiduciary breach under §§ 409 and 502(a)(2), 29 U. S. C. §§ 1109, 1132(a)(2) (1988 ed.), the provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA or Act) specifically designed for civil enforcement of fiduciary duties, must "be brought in a representative capacity on behalf of the plan as a whole." 473 U. S., at 142, n. 9. The Court today holds that § 502(a)(3), 29 U. S. C. § 1132(a)(3), the catchall remedial provision that directly follows § 502(a)(2), provides the individual relief for fiduciary breach that we found to be unavailable under § 502(a)(2). This holding cannot be squared with the text or structure of ERISA, and to reach it requires the repudiation of much of our reasoning in Russell. The Court also finds that Varity was subject to fiduciary obligations under ERISA because it engaged in activity of a "plan-related nature" that plan participants reasonably perceived to be conducted in the employer's capacity as plan fiduciary. Ante, at 503. This holding, like the first, has no basis in statutory text. Because these holdings are fundamentally at odds with the statutory scheme enacted by Congress, I respectfully dissent.
I
A
"ERISA is, we have observed, a 'comprehensive and reticulated statute,' the product of a decade of congressional study of the Nation's private employee benefit system." Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U. S. 248, 251 (1993) (quoting Nachman Corp. v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 446 U. S. 359, 361 (1980)). The Act is "an enormously complex and detailed statute that resolved innumerable disputes between powerful competing interests—not all in
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