The immediate effect of Jevic will be that practitioners may no longer structure dismissals in any manner that deviates from the priority scheme of the Bankruptcy Code without the consent of impaired creditors.

On March 22, 2017, the Supreme Court in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 580 U.S. __ (2017) held that a bankruptcy court does not have the power to approve a structured dismissal of a bankruptcy case that violates the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme unless the affected parties consent.

Good news: structured dismissals have survived Supreme Court scrutiny. Bad news: dismissals may be harder to structure, given yesterday’s 6-2 decision overruling the Third Circuit in Jevic narrowing the context in which they can be approved. We now have guidance on whether or not structured dismissals must follow the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme. The short answer is that they must.

On March 22, 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 580 U.S. __ (2017), holding that a bankruptcy court may not use a structured dismissal of a chapter 11 case to approve a distribution scheme that violates the absolute priority rule. In many middle-market cases, chapter 11 debtors had used this tool to get deals done and reorganize, despite their inability to confirm a chapter 11 plan.

In a highly anticipated bankruptcy opinion, the United States Supreme Court, in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., held that courts may not approve structured dismissals providing for distributions that deviate from the priority rules prescribed in the Bankruptcy Code, absent consent of the affected creditors.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued is highly awaited ruling in Czyzewski et al. v. Jevic Holding Corp. et al. The Jevic case presented the question whether bankruptcy courts may approve non-consensual structured dismissals that vary the distribution scheme established by the Bankruptcy Code.

On March 22, 2017, the United States Supreme Court held that bankruptcy courts cannot approve a “structured dismissal”—a dismissal with special conditions or that does something other than restoring the “prepetition financial status quo”—providing for distributions that deviate from the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme absent the consent of affected creditors. Czyzewski v.Jevic Holding Corp., No. 15-649, 580 U.S. ___ (2017), 2017 WL 1066259, at *3 (Mar. 22, 2017).

In a widely anticipated ruling, the Supreme Court in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp. ruled that bankruptcy courts “may not approve structured dismissals that provide for distributions that do not follow ordinary priority rules without the consent of affected creditors.” In doing so, the Court rejected the Third Circuit’s ruling that the circumstances were an unusual “rare case,” justifying deviation from the ordinary priority rules.

Seyfarth Synopsis: A bankruptcy court overseeing an employer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding allowed the employer to pay certain unsecured creditors before paying Worker Adjustment And Retraining Notification Act (“WARN”) creditors – workers who had sued the company – monies owed pursuant to a judgment, even though the bulk of the WARN monies owed were for back wages that hold priority over other unsecured claims under the Bankruptcy Code.

We previously wrote about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear a group of truck drivers’ challenge to the dismissal of a chapter 11 bankruptcy case that was designed to avoid paying the drivers’ claims. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Czyzewski v.