Wheeling won approval of a controversial plan.

A federal judge in Pittsburgh ratified Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel’s plan, allowing the company to reject its responsibilities to about 13,100 people drawing or entitled to pensions and about 8,500 active workers and to shift its $475-million pension liability onto the Federal Pension Guaranty Fund. “We’re disgusted with the whole set of circumstances here,” said Royal S. Dellinger, deputy executive director of the federal fund. Other officials of the fund, which charges employers $2.60 per worker per year to underwrite the retirement incomes of 38 million Americans, have called the pension rejection an abusive way for Wheeling-Pittsburgh to cut operating costs and better position itself to repay $530 million in loans from banks and other creditors.