Source: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/428_U.S._1
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 13:35:16+00:00

Document:
1. This Court's summary affirmance in National Independent Coal Operators Assn. v. Brennan, 419 U.S. 955, did not foreclose the District Court's rulings regarding §§ 411 (c) (3) and (4), which were not before the Court on that appeal. P. 14.
2. The challenged provisions do not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Pp. 14-38.
(a) The Clause does not bar requiring an operator to provide compensation for a former employee's death or disability due to pneumoconiosis arising out of employment in its mines, even if the former employee terminated his employment in its mines before the Act was passed. Retrospective application of the Act in this manner can be justified as serving to spread costs in a rational manner by allocating to the operator an actual cost of its business, whose avoidance might be thought to have enlarged the operator's profits. Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton R. Co., 295 U.S. 330, distinguished. Pp. 14-20, 24-27.
(b) Though the operators contend that the § 402 (f) definition of total disability is arbitrary because former miners who might be employable in other lines of work are compensated, a miner disabled under § 402 (f)'s standards has suffered health impairment, and has been rendered unable to perform the work to which he has adapted himself, factors which afford a rational basis for compensation. P. 21.
(c) The effect of § 411 (c) (3)'s "irrebuttable presumption" of total disability--to establish entitlement where a miner is clinically diagnosable as extremely ill with pneumoconiosis arising out of coal mine employment--is clearly permissible, and the provision, being part of a statute regulating purely economic matters, is not rendered invalid by Congress' choice of statutory language. Pp. 22-24.
(d) The presumptions in § 411 (c) (1) and (2) are valid because there is a "rational connection between the fact proved and the ultimate fact presumed," Mobile, J. & K. C. R. Co. v. Turnipseed, 219 U.S. 35, 43 . In view of the medical evidence before Congress indicating the noticeable incidence of pneumoconiosis in cases of miners with 10 years' mine employment, it was not "purely arbitrary" for Congress to select the 10-year figure as a reference point for the presumptions; nor are the 10-year presumptions arbitrary because they fail to account for varying degrees of exposure. Pp. 27-30.
(e) The 15-year durational basis of the presumption in § 411 (c) (4) is likewise unassailable, particularly in light of medical testimony in the Senate Hearings on the 1969 Act. Pp. 30-31.
(f) Congress had evidence showing doubts about the reliability of negative X-ray evidence as indicating the absence of the disease. That through its adoption of § 413 (b) Congress ultimately resolved those doubts in the disabled miner's favor does not render that provision arbitrary. Pp. 31-34.
(g) The District Court improperly invalidated the limitation on evidence contained in § 411 (c) (4) because the limitation is inapplicable to operators and applies only to the Secretary of HEW. Thus the Act does not restrict the evidence with which an operator may rebut the § 411 (c) (4) presumption. Pp. 34-37.
385 F. Supp. 424, affirmed in part; reversed in part; vacated and remanded in part.
Deputy Solicitor General Wallace argued the cause for appellants in No. 74-1302 and for appellees in No. 74-1316. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Bork, Assistant Attorney General Lee, Ronald R. Glancz, and Laurie Streeter.
Guy Farmer and William A. Gershuny filed a brief for the Bituminous Coal Operators' Assn., Inc., as amicus curiae.
Marshall, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Brennan, White, and Blackmun, JJ., joined; in all but Part IV of which Powell, J., joined; and in all but Part V-D of which Stewart and Rehnquist, JJ., joined. Powell, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment in part. Stewart, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Rehnquist, J., joined. Burger, C. J., concurred in the judgment. Stevens, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
^ . Together with No. 74-1316, Turner Elkhorn Mining Co. et al. v. Usery, Secretary of Labor, et al., also on appeal from the same court.
^ . Joseph A. Yablonski and Willard P. Owens filed a brief for the United Mine Workers of America as amicus curiae urging reversal in No. 74-1302 and affirmance in No. 74-1316.

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