Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 572.0

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Unit: $U94

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 498 (1998)

527

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

Ibid.

interferes with investment-backed expectations, and the
character of the governmental action—we determined that
Id., at 225.
the MPPAA did not violate the Takings Clause.
The governmental action at issue in Connolly was not
a physical
it “safe-
invasion of employers’ assets; rather,
guard[ed] the participants in multiemployer pension plans by
requiring a withdrawing employer to fund its share of the
plan obligations incurred during its association with the
In addition, although the amounts assessed
plan.”
under the MPPAA were substantial, we found it important
that “[t]he assessment of withdrawal liability [was] not made
in a vacuum, . . . but directly depend[ed] on the relationship
between the employer and the plan to which it had made
contributions.”
Ibid. Further, “a signiﬁcant number of
provisions in the Act . . . moderate[d] and mitigate[d] the
economic impact of an individual employer’s liability.”
Id.,
at 225–226. Accordingly, we found “nothing to show that
the withdrawal liability actually imposed on an employer
w[ould] always be out of proportion to its experience with
the plan.”
Id., at 226. Nor did the MPPAA interfere with
employers’ reasonable investment-backed expectations, for,
by the time of the MPPAA’s enactment, “[p]rudent employ-
ers . . . had more than sufﬁcient notice not only that pension
plans were currently regulated, but also that withdrawal it-
Id., at
self might trigger additional ﬁnancial obligations.”
227. For those reasons, we determined that “fairness and
justice” did not require anyone other than the withdrawing
employers and the remaining parties to the pension agree-
ments to bear the burden of funding employees’ vested bene-
ﬁts.

Ibid.

We once more faced challenges to the MPPAA under the
Due Process and Takings Clauses in Concrete Pipe & Prod-
ucts of Cal., Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust
for Southern Cal., 508 U. S. 602 (1993).
In that case, the
employer focused on the fact that its contractual commitment
to the multiemployer plan did not impose withdrawal liabil-