Professor Samantha J. Prince submits amicus curiae brief with SCOTUS

CARLISLE, Pa.—Professor Samantha J. Prince, alongside practicing attorney co-authors Jon-Michael Dougherty and Kurt G. Kastorf, submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the petitioner’s request for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court case King v. United States (No. 25-856). The brief urges the Court to review the case to address how the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA) facilitates unconstitutional property seizures. It specifically challenges the MPRA’s core mechanism, which allows trustees of distressed multiemployer plans to “suspend” or permanently reduce vested benefits to prevent plan insolvency. Prince contends that this statute effectively authorizes plan managers to appropriate earned retirement savings from participants who have already fulfilled their service requirements, leaving them to bear the cost of fund mismanagement.

The brief centers on the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, asserting that these benefit reductions constitute a direct, uncompensated taking of private property. Prince argues that because these pension benefits are vested, they represent a secured property interest rather than a mere expectation. By authorizing the claw back of these assets with the government’s imprimatur, the MPRA violates the constitutional mandate that private property shall not be taken for public use—even the public goal of plan solvency—without just compensation.

Prince’s scholarship emphasizes that accrued retirement benefits are vested, nonforfeitable contractual rights that qualify as private property. Drawing on her broader work regarding the nonforfeitability of all retirement assets, the brief seeks to assist the Supreme Court in understanding the systemic risks of permitting the claw back of vested benefits. Her research highlights the importance of protecting individuals’ rights to retirement benefits, bolstering the argument that government interference with such benefits warrants per se takings treatment—meaning the government has essentially seized a specific property interest. In citing her articles,

“Vesting Villainy: The Call to Ban 401(k) Vesting Schedules” and “Nest Eggs and Lifelines: The Overlooked Strain of Economic Volatility on 401(k) Participants,” the brief emphasizes that vested retirement benefits are earned through a worker’s prior labor and warns that retroactively revoking them threatens both individual and systemic financial stability.

Prince’s work on 401(k) plans contributes to the overall discussion around protecting workers’ retirement benefits. Including the above-mentioned articles, Professor Prince has also authored “Megacompany Employee Churn Meets 401(k) Vesting Schedules: A Sabotage on Workers’ Retirement Wealth,” published by Yale Law & Policy Review; “The Effects of 401(k) Vesting Schedules—in Numbers,” published by The Yale Law Journal Forum; “Promoting Financial Empowerment via 401(k) Plan Domestic Abuse Victim Distributions,” published by the George Washington Business & Finance Law Review online; “Benefits Transparency,” published by Marquette Law Review (where she called for more transparency through mandatory disclosure of 401(k) plan details); and “Benefits Washing,” published by the Georgetown Law Journal Online (where she shows examples of companies that “wash” their 401(k) plan details, including vesting schedules).

Professor Samantha J. Prince is an associate professor of law. She has a Master of Laws in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center and was a partner in a regional law firm where she handled transactional matters that ranged from an initial public offering to regular representation of a publicly traded company. A significant part of her practice was in employee benefits, including retirement plan design and operation. Her expertise from practice has fueled her research, enabling her to become an expert on 401(k) vesting schedules, employee benefits transparency, and gig work. In practice, most of her clients were small- to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs, including start-ups. Professor Prince brought her practice knowledge to the Law School and established the Penn State Dickinson Law entrepreneurship program. She is an advisor for the Entrepreneurship Law Certificate that is available to students and is the founder and moderator of the Inside Entrepreneurship Law blog.