On May 20, 2025, Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight filed a Class Action Complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (“TIAA”) on behalf of Brian Byrne individually and as a representative of approximately 28,000 participants in and beneficiaries of the TIAA Plans, called the TIAA Code Section 401(k) Plan and the TIAA Retirement Plan (collectively, the “Plans”).

The Complaint alleges “multiple breaches” of fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) related to the retention of eight different in-house investment funds by the fiduciaries of TIAA’s two in-house retirement plans.

The Complaint alleges that instead of offering the cheapest share class to the Plans’ participants, TIAA included in the Plans a share class whose fees were higher than what was available for the exact same CREF investment fund. This resulted in the TIAA Plans paying millions more in higher fees, while TIAA reaped millions more in fee income, in violation of the duties of loyalty and prudence under ERISA, according to the Complaint. The ERISA breaches have cost participants and beneficiaries millions of dollars in retirement savings, the Complaint alleges.

The Complaint also alleges that TIAA breached ERISA’s duty of prudence by failing to remove from the Plans its proprietary, in-house CREF Growth Fund, despite chronic under-performance relative to its stated benchmark, the Russell 1000 Growth Index, and similar large cap growth funds. Since 2009, according to the Complaint, the CREF Growth Fund has underperformed the Russell 1000 Growth Index by more than 186%.

Named as Defendants are TIAA; the TIAA Board of Trustees and its members (the “Board of Trustees”); the TIAA Plan Investment Review Committee and its members (the “Investment Committee”); and John Does 1–30 (collectively, “TIAA Defendants”).

The Complaint seeks to recover the losses to Plaintiffs’ retirement savings caused by the TIAA Defendants’ alleged ERISA breaches.