On March 15, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated the “fiduciary rule” which had been promulgated by the Department of Labor (the “DOL”) in
2016, finding that the DOL lacked the statutory authority to promulgate the rule re-defining who is a “fiduciary” for purposes of ERISA, and that the rule “bears the hallmarks of ‘unreasonableness’ . . . and arbitrary and capricious exercises of administrative power.” Parts of the fiduciary rule initially became effective on
June 9, 2017, but the applicability of the remaining aspects of the rule had previously been
delayed by the DOL, under direction from the Trump Administration, until July 1, 2019.