A federal District Court in Minnesota has held that a pension plan for employees of a publishing house for the Evangelical Lutheran Church is a “church plan” not subject to liability under the federal ERISA rules, but has allowed claimants to seek to pierce the corporate veil between the publishing house and the church in order to pursue state law claims for breach of contract. A retirement plan was established in 1939 for the employees of Augsburg Fortress Publishers, a publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. ELCA is a Minnesota nonprofit with principal offices in Chicago. It has approximately 10,500 congregations and 4.5 million members. Augsburg publishes...