Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 595

524US2

Unit: $U94

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550

EASTERN ENTERPRISES v. APFEL

Stevens, J., dissenting

this purpose. Eastern was once in the coal business and
employed many of the beneﬁciaries, but it was not responsi-
ble for their expectation of lifetime health beneﬁts or for the
perilous ﬁnancial condition of the 1950 and 1974 plans which
put the beneﬁts in jeopardy. As the plurality opinion dis-
cusses in detail, the expectation was created by promises and
agreements made long after Eastern left the coal business.
Eastern was not responsible for the resulting chaos in the
funding mechanism caused by other coal companies leav-
ing the framework of the National Bituminous Coal Wage
Agreement. Ante, at 535–536. This case is far outside the
bounds of retroactivity permissible under our law.

Finding a due process violation in this case is consistent
with the principle that “under the deferential standard of
review applied in substantive due process challenges to eco-
nomic legislation there is no need for mathematical precision
in the ﬁt between justiﬁcation and means.” Concrete Pipe,
supra, at 639 (citing Turner Elkhorn, 428 U. S., at 19).
Statutes may be invalidated on due process grounds only
under the most egregious of circumstances. This case rep-
resents one of the rare instances in which even such a per-
missive standard has been violated.

Application of the Coal Act to Eastern would violate the
proper bounds of settled due process principles, and I concur
in the plurality’s conclusion that the judgment of the Court
of Appeals must be reversed.

Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter, Justice

Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.

Some appellate judges are better historians than others.
With respect to the central issue resolved by the Coal Act
of 1992, I am persuaded that the consensus among the Cir-
cuit Judges who have appraised the issue is more accurate
than the views of this Court’s majority.1 The uneasy truce

1 See ante, at 535–536 (plurality opinion of O(cid:146)Connor, J., joined by
Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia and Thomas, JJ.); ante, at 539, 549 and this
page (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment and dissenting in part).