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524US2

Unit: $U94

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EASTERN ENTERPRISES v. APFEL

Opinion of O(cid:146)Connor, J.

insure itself against liabilities arising out of its former coal
operations, that indemnity is neither enhanced nor sup-
planted by the Coal Act and does not affect the availability
of the declaratory relief Eastern seeks.

We are also not persuaded by respondents’ argument that
the Coal Act “moderate[s] and mitigate[s] the economic im-
pact” upon Eastern. See Connolly, 475 U. S., at 225–226.
Although Eastern is not assigned the premiums for former
employees who later worked for companies that signed the
1978 NBCWA, see 26 U. S. C. §§ 9706(a)(1), (2), Eastern had
no control over the activities of its former employees subse-
quent to its departure from the coal industry in 1965. By
contrast, the provisions of the MPPAA that we identiﬁed as
potentially moderating the employer’s liability in Connolly
were generally within the employer’s control. See 475 U. S.,
at 226, n. 8. The mere fact that Eastern is not forced to bear
the burden of lifetime beneﬁts respecting all of its former
employees does not mean that the company’s liability for
some of those employees is not a signiﬁcant economic burden.
For similar reasons, the Coal Act substantially interferes
with Eastern’s reasonable investment-backed expectations.
The Act’s beneﬁciary allocation scheme reaches back 30 to
50 years to impose liability against Eastern based on the
company’s activities between 1946 and 1965. Thus, even
though the Act mandates only the payment of future health
beneﬁts, it nonetheless “attaches new legal consequences to
[an employment relationship] completed before its enact-
ment.” Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 270
(1994).

Retroactivity is generally disfavored in the law, Bowen v.
Georgetown Univ. Hospital, 488 U. S. 204, 208 (1988), in ac-
cordance with “fundamental notions of justice” that have
been recognized throughout history, Kaiser Aluminum &
Chemical Corp. v. Bonjorno, 494 U. S. 827, 855 (1990)
(Scalia, J., concurring). See also, e. g., Dash v. Van Kleeck,
7 Johns. *477, *503 (NY 1811) (“It is a principle in the Eng-