A Manhattan federal judge said Wednesday that she would approve a $4.7 million settlement for a class of IBM employees in a long-running lawsuit that worked its way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and back again.

The ruling, from U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York, capped nearly six years of litigation in the case, which was complicated by heightened standards for pleading violations of fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.