Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 547.0

524US2

Unit: $U94

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502

EASTERN ENTERPRISES v. APFEL

Syllabus

far in the past, and unrelated to any commitment that the employers
made or to any injury they caused. Pp. 529–537.

Justice Kennedy concluded that application of the Coal Act to East-
ern would violate the proper bounds of settled due process principles.
Although the Court has been hesitant to subject economic legislation to
due process scrutiny as a general matter, this country’s law has har-
bored a singular distrust of retroactive statutes, and that distrust is
reﬂected in this Court’s due process jurisprudence. For example, in
Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U. S. 1, 15, the Court held
that due process requires an inquiry into whether a legislature acted in
an arbitrary and irrational way when enacting a retroactive law. This
formulation has been repeated in numerous recent cases, e. g., United
States v. Carlton, 512 U. S. 26, 31, which reﬂect the recognition that
retroactive lawmaking is a particular concern because of the legislative
temptation to use it as a means of retribution against unpopular groups
or individuals, Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 266. Be-
cause change in the legal consequences of transactions long closed can
destroy the reasonable certainty and security which are the very objects
of property ownership, due process protection for property must be un-
derstood to incorporate the settled tradition against retroactive laws of
great severity. The instant case presents one of those rare instances
where the legislature has exceeded the limits imposed by due process.
The Coal Act’s remedy bears no legitimate relation to the interest which
the Government asserts supports the statute. The degree of retroac-
tive effect, which is a signiﬁcant determinant in a statute’s constitution-
ality, e. g., United States v. Carlton, supra, at 32, is of unprecedented
scope here, since the Coal Act created liability for events occurring 35
years ago. While the Court has upheld the imposition of liability on
former employers based on past employment relationships when the re-
medial statutes were designed to impose an actual, measurable business
cost which the employer had been able to avoid in the past, e. g., Turner
Elkhorn, supra, at 19, the Coal Act does not serve this purpose. The
beneﬁciaries’ expectation of lifetime beneﬁts was created by promises
and agreements made long after Eastern left the coal business, and
Eastern was not responsible for the perilous condition of the 1950 and
1974 Plans which jeopardized the beneﬁts. Pp. 547–550.

O(cid:146)Connor, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an
opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined.
Thomas, J., ﬁled a concurring opinion, post, p. 538. Kennedy, J., ﬁled an
opinion concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part, post, p. 539.
Stevens, J., ﬁled a dissenting opinion, in which Souter, Ginsburg, and
Breyer, JJ., joined, post, p. 550. Breyer, J., ﬁled a dissenting opinion,
in which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, post, p. 553.