Cash balance plans have moved from the media spotlight into the deliberative focus of the judiciary. Two appellate decisions last year refused to give cash balance plans a judicial pass from ERISA's cash-out and backloading rules, which in combination can require lump sum distributions in excess of a participant's hypothetical account balance. And now cash balance plans face a new and more significant round of judicial challenges, this one involving their one potentially lethal legal (as opposed to political and policy) shortcoming: their failure to satisfy the age-based accrual requirement of IRC Section 411(b)(l)(H).