Opinion ID: 433021
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Rationality Standard

Text: 28 We conclude that the traditional standard of review applies in this case: 29 It is by now well established that legislative Acts adjusting the burdens and benefits of economic life come to the Court with a presumption of constitutionality, and that the burden is on one complaining of a due process violation to establish that the legislature has acted in an arbitrary and irrational way. See, e.g., Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726 [83 S.Ct. 1028, 10 L.Ed.2d 93] (1963); Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U.S. 483, 487-488 [75 S.Ct. 461, 464-465, 99 L.Ed. 563] (1955). 30 Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 15, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 2892, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976); accord Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 83, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 2635, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978). 31 Our analysis of the present case relies principally on the Supreme Court's decision in Turner Elkhorn, upholding provisions of title IV of the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, as amended by the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972, that require coal mine operators to pay black lung benefits to miners who left employment in the industry before the effective date of the Act, and to the survivors of such miners. The mine operators argued that these provisions violate due process by charging them with an unexpected liability for past, completed acts. The Court noted that the provisions are not unconstitutional merely because they impose a new liability based on past acts, but that [t]he retrospective aspects of legislation, as well as the prospective aspects, must meet the test of due process, and the justifications for the latter may not suffice for the former. 428 U.S. at 17, 96 S.Ct. at 2893. The Court concluded that the imposition of liability for the effects of disabilities bred in the past is justified as a rational measure to spread the costs of the employees' disabilities to those who have profited from the fruits of their labor. Id. at 18, 96 S.Ct. at 2893. The Court distinguished the portion of Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co., 295 U.S. 330, 55 S.Ct. 758, 79 L.Ed. 1468 (1935), that invalidated as arbitrary a provision in the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934 providing for employer-financed pensions for former employees who, though not in the employ of the railroads at the time of enactment, had been so employed within the year. 10 That provision required the railroads to make additional payments to workers who had already been fully compensated for their services, in contrast to the provisions in Turner Elkhorn, which allocate to the mine operator an actual, measurable cost of his business. 428 U.S. at 19, 96 S.Ct. at 2894. 32 Like the provisions upheld in Turner Elkhorn, the MPPAA withdrawal provisions at issue in the present case are a rational means of allocating among a group of employers the collective burden of ensuring that their employees receive full compensation. Part of the total employment compensation paid to employees covered by multiemployer pension plans is the entitlement to pension benefits upon satisfaction of vesting requirements. It is true that employers under a multiemployer pension plan expressly agree only to make negotiated contributions. Nevertheless, we do not consider it at all irrational for Congress to impose liability for a plan's unfunded vested benefits collectively on employers who have profited from employees' services that were provided in part in exchange for an entitlement to those vested benefits. 33 The Star argues that the MPPAA unfairly allocates liability for a plan's unfunded vested benefits among the individual employers who have contributed to the plan. Due process, however, leaves Congress with considerable flexibility in determining how to spread the cost of ensuring the retirement security of participants in multiemployer plans. As the Supreme Court noted in Turner Elkhorn, [i]t is enough to say that the Act approaches the problem of cost spreading rationally; whether a broader cost-spreading scheme would have been wiser or more practical under the circumstances is not a question of constitutional dimension. 428 U.S. at 19, 96 S.Ct. at 2894. 34 The cost allocation problem addressed by the MPPAA is one of enormous difficulty. Not even the total amount of a plan's underfunding is known until the plan terminates or becomes insolvent. It is clearly rational, however, to assess and begin to collect an individual employer's liability immediately at the time of its withdrawal, even though the plan itself may be on-going. The Star specifically criticizes Congress' solution to the problem of cost assessment and allocation on the ground that it imposes liability for the large accumulations of pre-MPPAA underfunding only upon the group of employers who were contributing to multiemployer plans as of April 29, 1980. Employers who withdrew from multiemployer plans before that date are assessed no liability. Employers who did not begin contributing to a plan until after that date are liable only for their proportionate share of the changes in unfunded vested liability during each plan year in which they contribute. But Congress clearly had a rationale for choosing the solution it did. Congress could not have imposed liability on employers who withdrew before April 29, 1980, without substantially increasing the MPPAA's retroactive effect. And Congress could not have imposed liability for pre-MPPAA underfunding on employers who began contributing to a plan subsequent to the enactment of the MPPAA without discouraging new entrants to multiemployer plans and thus defeating the MPPAA's purpose. 35 The Star also criticizes the MPPAA withdrawal liability rules because they allegedly levy an assessment upon a withdrawing employer that may exceed the value of its own employees' unfunded benefits. The Star's argument that the MPPAA provisions are unconstitutional because they do not base liability precisely on past employment relationships is curiously at odds with the argument made by the mine operators in Turner Elkhorn that the Act spreads costs in an arbitrary and irrational manner by basing liability upon past employment relationships, rather than taxing all coal mine operators presently in business. 428 U.S. at 18, 96 S.Ct. at 2893. Neither of these arguments, however, is of constitutional dimension: as the Court noted in Turner Elkhorn, it is for Congress to choose between imposing the burden of inactive miners' disabilities on all operators, including new entrants and farsighted early operators who might have taken steps to minimize black lung dangers, or to impose that liability solely on those early operators whose profits may have been increased at the expense of their employees' health. 428 U.S. at 18, 96 S.Ct. at 2894. 36 In summary, the MPPAA withdrawal liability provisions are rational both in imposing collective liability for a multiemployer pension plan's unfunded vested benefits upon the employers who have contributed to the plan and in the manner in which they allocate that liability among the individual employers. Accordingly, the provisions satisfy the requirements of substantive due process.