Section 510 of Obamacare’s employer mandate reads:

“… it shall be unlawful for any person to discharge, fine, suspend, expel, discipline, or discriminate against a participant or beneficiary of an employee benefit plan for the purpose of interfering with the attainment of any right to which such participant may become entitled under an employee benefit plan …”

Since its enactment, Section 510 of ERISA has caused many employment law experts to question if it could be used to bring lawsuits against employers who cut workers’ hours to circumvent the mandate.

Employees at Dave & Buster’s filed a class action lawsuit against the restaurant chain saying that the company violated ERISA’s Section 510 by reducing their hours to below 30 per week.  The employees are saying that the company did this in order to avoid Obamacare’s employer mandate to provide full-time employees with health benefits.

According to the lawsuit paperwork, during a meeting at a Dave & Buster’s location, a company general manager said that Obamacare would wind up costing the company over $2 million.  In order to avoid this, the plan was to cut the hours of full-time workers.  According to the plaintiffs, similar meetings were held at Dave & Buster’s across the company.

While this has yet to go to court, employment experts are calling this a landmark case.  Currently there is no answer to whether or not ERISA can actually be applied to health plans.