Opinion ID: 695150
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: constitutionality of coal act

Text: 34 LTV alleges two constitutional deficiencies in the Coal Act: first, that the Act violates the Due Process Clause, and second, that the Act constitutes a taking of private property for public use without just compensation.
35 Under the due process standards set forth by the Supreme Court, we review laws adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life for arbitrariness and irrationality. Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 15, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 2892, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976). Because it burdens no fundamental rights, the Coal Act is a classic example of an economic regulation and is subject only to the minimum scrutiny rational basis test. Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 83, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 2636, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978). Substantive due process requires only that economic legislation be supported by a legitimate legislative purpose furthered by a rational means. Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. v. R.A. Gray & Co., 467 U.S. 717, 729, 104 S.Ct. 2709, 2717-18, 81 L.Ed.2d 601 (1984). Because LTV does not quarrel with the legitimacy of Congress's purpose in enacting the Coal Act, we need decide only whether the means chosen are demonstrably arbitrary or irrational. Duke Power, 438 U.S. at 83-84, 98 S.Ct. at 2636. 36 The doctrinal landscape which confronts LTV's due process challenge encompasses unusually inhospitable legal terrain. Since its decision in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co., 295 U.S. 330, 55 S.Ct. 758, 79 L.Ed. 1468 (1935), the Supreme Court has proven reticent to involve itself in decisions about economic policy. We are aware of no post-1935 cases in which the Supreme Court invalidated an economic regulation on substantive due process grounds. On the contrary, the Court's posture has been one of deference to Congress's economic policy prerogatives. See, e.g., Concrete Pipe & Prods. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 2264, 124 L.Ed.2d 539 (1993) (upholding retroactive effect of the withdrawal liability provisions of the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act); General Motors Corp. v. Romein, 503 U.S. 181, 190-92, 112 S.Ct. 1105, 1112, 117 L.Ed.2d 328 (1992) (upholding retroactive legislation affecting Michigan's compensation benefits law); United States v. Sperry Corp., 493 U.S. 52, 110 S.Ct. 387, 107 L.Ed.2d 290 (1989) (upholding retroactive effect of federal legislation with respect to the costs of an international claims tribunal); PBGC v. R.A. Gray & Co., 467 U.S. 717, 104 S.Ct. 2709, 81 L.Ed.2d 601 (1984) (upholding retroactive effect of federal legislation imposing liability for withdrawal from pension plans); Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976) (upholding retroactive effect of federal law imposing liability on coal mine employers for employee disabilities caused by black lung disease); see also Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 74 S.Ct. 737, 98 L.Ed. 911 (1954) (upholding retroactive application of federal legislation concerning immigration and deportation of aliens); Chase Sec. Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 65 S.Ct. 1137, 89 L.Ed. 1628 (1945) (upholding repeal of statute of limitations which deprived defendant of his sole defense); Paramino Lumber Co. v. Marshall, 309 U.S. 370, 60 S.Ct. 600, 84 L.Ed. 814 (1940) (upholding legislation that reopened a workers' compensation proceeding after the time for judicial appeal had expired). In spite of this unbroken chain of unsuccessful due process challenges, LTV argues that Alton controls the disposition of this case. LTV also attempts to distinguish the post-Alton cases to demonstrate that the Coal Act, unlike all other economic legislation reviewed by the Court since 1935, tips the scales of arbitrariness and irrationality. On both counts we find LTV's arguments unavailing. 37 In Alton, the Supreme Court struck down a statute requiring railroad carriers to provide pension benefits to recently retired employees. While Alton has never been expressly overruled, courts over many years have expressed doubts about its continuing validity. See, e.g., Peick v. Pension Benefit Guar. Corp., 724 F.2d 1247, 1266 (7th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1259, 104 S.Ct. 3554, 82 L.Ed.2d 855 (1984) (The Court's method of analysis in Turner Elkhorn Mining represents a fundamental shift from that employed in Alton Railroad.); A-T-O, Inc. v. Pension Benefit Guar. Corp., 634 F.2d 1013, 1025 n. 13 (6th Cir.1980) ([W]e ... question the continued vitality of the Supreme Court's reasoning in [Alton ].); Chew v. E.R. Quesada, 182 F.Supp. 231, 232 (D.D.C.1960) (The evidence is overwhelming that Alton is no longer controlling law.). In both letter and spirit, Alton belongs to the long-discredited era of Lochner-style judicial activism. See Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937 (1905). That is, Alton was decided prior to the Court's 1937 abandonment of intrusive judicial scrutiny of economic legislation under the rubric of substantive due process. See West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379, 57 S.Ct. 578, 81 L.Ed. 703 (1937); United States v. Carolene Prod. Co., 304 U.S. 144, 58 S.Ct. 778, 82 L.Ed. 1234 (1938). See generally Bruce A. Ackerman, We the People: Foundations, 48-50 (1991); Morton J. Horowitz, The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice, 0 Wash. & Lee L.Rev. 5, 5 (1993) ([T]he New Deal Revolution of 1937 ... fundamentally altered the relationship between the federal government and the states and between the government and the economy.). Beginning with West Coast Hotel, due process review has metamorphosed into a creature of a different stripe. For example, the presumption of constitutionality which now attaches to all legislative Acts adjusting the burdens and benefits of economic life, Turner Elkhorn, 428 U.S. at 15, 96 S.Ct. at 2892, was absent from the Alton Court's analysis. Indeed, in Gray, 467 U.S. at 733, 104 S.Ct. at 2719-20, the Supreme Court itself expressly declined a litigant's invitation to resuscitate the Alton holding. As it had earlier done in Turner Elkhorn, 428 U.S. at 19, 96 S.Ct. at 2894, the Court instead [a]ssum[ed] that Alton  'retains vitality' despite the changes in judicial review of economic legislation that have occurred in the ensuing years, and then proceeded to distinguish the case on its facts. 467 U.S. at 733, 104 S.Ct. at 2720. 38 We need not attempt here a definitive measurement of Alton 's jurisprudential vital signs because the provisions of the Coal Act are easily distinguishable from those of the Railroad Retirement Act. First, the Alton Court found that the pre-enactment railroad retirees, who became eligible for employer-funded pensions under the Railroad Retirement Act, had retired without any expectation, legitimate or otherwise, of receiving pension benefits. 295 U.S. at 349, 55 S.Ct. at 762. The Court held that this requirement ... imposes for the future a burden never contemplated by either party when the earlier relation existed or when it was terminated. Id. By contrast, every court to examine the 1974 and subsequent Wage Agreements has concluded that they created a legitimate expectation of lifetime health benefits for retired miners. As this court observed in Chateaugay, 945 F.2d at 1210, retired coal miners are guaranteed provision of health benefits for life under the collective bargaining agreement. Accord Royal Coal II, 826 F.2d at 282 (At the outset of our analysis we note that we agree with the district court's conclusion that the intentions of the parties in providing for retirement health benefits was to guarantee their provision for life.); Nobel, 720 F.Supp. at 1178 (We find that the language [of the Wage Agreements] confers a right to benefits for the lifetime of the pensioner.). In Barrick Gold Exploration, Inc. v. Hudson, 823 F.Supp. 1395, 1405 (S.D.Ohio 1993), aff'd, 47 F.3d 832 (6th Cir.1995), the court found that the Wage Agreements promised lifetime health benefits to miners. In Templeton Coal Co., Inc. v. Shalala, 855 F.Supp. 990, 1003 (S.D.Ind.1993), the court upheld the constitutionality of the Coal Act even as applied to companies who signed only pre-1974 Wage Agreements: 39 Congress is well within its authority in viewing the history of collective bargaining in the mining industry to determine that operators like these Plaintiffs created an atmosphere that promised lifetime health benefits to those who would retire from the industry. In return, such operators received labor at the time. 40 Consistent with such findings, the Coal Commission rested its legislative recommendations upon the premise that a legitimate expectation of lifetime health benefits had been created. Coal Comm. Rpt. at vii, 1, JA 397, 405. Accordingly, we hold that, unlike the provisions challenged in Alton, the Coal Act operates to enforce a legitimate expectation generated by the parties in the course of their voluntary contractual relationship. 41 Second, the Alton Court's finding of irrationality derived in large part from its finding that, by making benefits available to all those employed by a railroad during the year preceding the statute's enactment, the Railroad Retirement Act extended pensions to thousands who have been unfaithful and for that cause have been separated from the service, or who have elected to pursue some other calling, or who have retired from the business, or who have been for other reasons lawfully dismissed. 295 U.S. at 349, 55 S.Ct. at 762. The Court believed that providing pensions to such persons could not in reason or common sense be said to advance the statute's objective of promoting efficiency or safety in the future operation of the railroads. Id. The Court complained that as to some of the railroad companies [the Railroad Retirement Act] constitutes a naked appropriation of private property upon the basis of transactions with which the owners of the property were never connected. Id. at 350, 55 S.Ct. at 762. By contrast, under the Coal Act eligibility for health benefits extends only to those miners who accumulated twenty years of classified labor in the coal industry or who were disabled in the course of their employment. Unlike the Railroad Retirement Act, the Coal Act links operator liability to previous employment relationships by assigning beneficiaries to their former employers where possible. As a signatory to the 1974 and subsequent Wage Agreements, LTV joined in the mining industry's collective assumption of responsibility for the orphaned retirees' benefits. Having negotiated over and contributed to the 1974 Benefit Trust for over a decade, LTV cannot now insist that it was never connected with the problem of the orphans. Unlike the employers in Alton, LTV has by its own voluntary actions formed the connections and undertaken the responsibilities which now constitute the basis of its liability under the Coal Act. In light of these critical distinctions between Alton and the case before us, we conclude that Alton is not controlling. 42 We turn then to an assessment of LTV's claims under the post-Alton economic regulation cases. LTV claims that it is arbitrary and irrational to require a former party to time-limited contracts, whose obligations have been fulfilled and terminated, to now finance the provision of lifetime health benefits not only to former employees but also to a number of retired miners who at no time worked for LTV. Absent the Coal Act, LTV argues that both it and the UMWA miners got what they bargained for: The miners got contributions to the Benefit Trusts during the term of the agreement, and LTV got the right to withdraw from the system upon the expiration of the 1984 Wage Agreement. With the Coal Act, says LTV, the government has not merely rewritten our old contracts with our own former employees, it has created from whole cloth entirely new contracts obligating us to provide lifetime health benefits to retirees we never employed. In short, LTV argues, Congress's retroactive construction of new liabilities on the rubble of past acts violates the Due Process Clause, particularly where the parties involved have already fulfilled their contractual obligations to one another. 43 We agree with LTV's contention that the Coal Act has some retrospective effect. To some degree, the Coal Act upsets otherwise settled expectations, and impose[s] a new duty or liability based on past acts. Turner Elkhorn, 428 U.S. at 16, 96 S.Ct. at 2893. As LTV points out, [r]etroactive legislation presents problems of unfairness that are more serious than those posed by prospective legislation, because it can deprive citizens of legitimate expectations and upset settled transactions. General Motors Corp. v. Romein, 503 U.S. at 191, 112 S.Ct. at 1112. Yet it is equally clear that the presence of some retroactivity in no way alters our deferential standards of review. As a unanimous Court held in Gray, 467 U.S. at 729, 104 S.Ct. at 2717-18: 44 [T]he strong deference accorded legislation in the field of national economic policy is no less applicable when that legislation is applied retroactively. Provided that the retroactive application of a statute is supported by a legitimate legislative purpose furthered by rational means, judgments about the wisdom of such legislation remain within the exclusive province of the legislative and executive branches. 45 The Court has cautioned 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, suggesting that, for example, theories of deterrence and punishment may be insufficient to justify the retrospective imposition of liability. Turner Elkhorn, 428 U.S. at 17, 96 S.Ct. at 2893. Nevertheless, the governing standard of review in this case remains that of arbitrariness and irrationality. 46 In Turner Elkhorn, coal miners challenged the constitutionality of provisions of the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972, 30 U.S.C. Secs. 901-45, that required operators to pay benefits to miners who contract pneumoconiosis and their survivors even if the miners had ceased employment in the coal industry before the effective date of the Act. 428 U.S. at 8-10, 96 S.Ct. at 2889-90. As in this case, the plaintiffs in Turner Elkhorn argued that the Due Process Clause prevented Congress from requiring them to assume responsibility for the former miners, individuals whose work in the industry had terminated prior to the passage of the statute and who had never been promised any of the benefits the operators were required to fund under the statute. The Court held that: 47 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 [--] the operators and the coal consumers. 48 428 U.S. at 18, 96 S.Ct. at 2893. As the Court noted elsewhere, [i]t is surely proper for Congress to legislate retrospectively to ensure that the costs of a program are borne by the entire class of persons that Congress rationally believes should bear them. Sperry, 493 U.S. at 64-65, 110 S.Ct. at 396 (upholding retroactive effect of legislation permitting deduction of user fee from awards of United States-Iran Tribunal). 49 In Gray, the Court considered a due process challenge to the retroactive application of the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980, 29 U.S.C. Secs. 1381-1461 (MPPAA), a statute requiring employers withdrawing from multiemployer pension plans to pay their pro rata share of the plan's vested unfunded liabilities. The Court concluded that Congress was eminently rational in imposing the MPPAA's obligations retroactively in order that employers who withdrew from plans during consideration of the proposed legislation would not thereby achieve any advantage. 467 U.S. at 730-31, 104 S.Ct. at 2718-19. In 1993, the Supreme Court in Concrete Pipe again upheld the MPPAA against a challenge that it improperly imposed withdrawal liability upon an employer who had contributed to a pension plan prior to the enactment of the statute and who had terminated its contractual liability for additional contributions. See --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2274-75. The Court quoted its holding in Gray that legislation readjusting rights and benefits is not unlawful solely because it upsets otherwise settled expectations, id. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2287, and reaffirmed that the statute was subject to due process review only for rationality, id. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2289. 50 LTV's efforts to distinguish Turner Elkhorn, Gray, and Concrete Pipe are unpersuasive. In essence, LTV suggests that the rational bases accepted by the Court in those cases constitute a closed set of permissible justifications. On the contrary, these cases all reiterate the principle that retrospective cost-spreading statutes must be upheld if there exists a rational connection between a legitimate legislative purpose and the chosen statutory means. 51 We have no difficulty discerning in the Coal Act a rational scheme to achieve a legitimate legislative purpose. As the district court below accurately noted, the critical flaw in LTV's claim that there is no rational relationship between its past payments for its former employees' health benefits and the requirement that it now pay for those benefits, and those of certain orphan beneficiaries, for the balance of those beneficiaries' lives, is that at least between 1974 and 1986, LTV was signatory to a series of NBCWAs that included language that gave retired coal miners a legitimate expectation of lifetime health benefits. In re Chateaugay, 163 B.R. at 963. LTV's Coal Act liability arises out of an untenable situation of LTV's own making. With one hand, LTV promised the coal industry's miners that they would receive health care benefits for life. With the other hand, LTV secured a contractual ability to leave the coal industry, unload its retirees into the 1974 Benefit Trust, and thereby free itself of financial responsibility for the fulfillment of its promise. By exercising that contractual right and orphaning its retirees in 1986, LTV became a prime contributor to the financial crisis in the Benefit Trusts. The district court stated it well: 52 While LTV might well have expected that other coal operators would be required to pay for those benefits after LTV left the coal mining industry, LTV also could reasonably have anticipated that the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Trusts would not be able to support the financial burdens imposed upon them as a result of escalating health care costs, the aging of the beneficiary population and the dumping of beneficiaries into the 1974 Benefit Trust, both by companies going out of business totally and companies who, like LTV, ceased coal mining operations but remained in business in other industries. 53 Id. 54 We find eminently rational Congress's decision to apportion liability for the promised lifetime health benefits among all the companies that collectively made the promise. Cf. National R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 470 U.S. 451, 477, 105 S.Ct. 1441, 1457-58, 84 L.Ed.2d 432 (1985) (Congress acted rationally in requiring private railroads to pay a portion of the cost of rail travel passes provided to railroad employees by Amtrack in part because the railroads, rather than the taxpayers, were responsible for the creation of the moral obligation to provide such privileges). As an entity that benefitted directly from the effect of that promise on the availability and quality of UMWA labor, LTV cannot now maintain that Congress acted arbitrarily in assigning to LTV a proportional share of the future cost of fulfilling that promise. 55 In light of the mounting crisis in the UMWA benefit trusts, the resulting strikes and disruptions in the coal fields, and the very real danger that 200,000 retirees would fall onto government assistance unless the coal industry were held to its earlier promises of lifetime health benefits, we hold that Congress acted neither arbitrarily nor irrationally by shifting the burden of the crisis onto those most responsible for creating it. Nor do we find evidence of arbitrariness or irrationality in the Coal Act's formulas for assigning retirees to former employers and for calculating pro rata shares of death benefits and unassigned retiree benefits. Our conclusion is buttressed by Congress's provision of mitigating transfers that first eliminate and then substantially reduce LTV's liability for retired miners that LTV never employed. 56 LTV separately argues that the Coal Act is arbitrary or irrational due to its unprecedented degree of retroactivity. LTV Br. at 31. The proposition that the Due Process Clause imposes a time limit on a law's retrospective effect elicits no support from the case law and runs afoul of the numerous decisions upholding the constitutionality of the unlimited retrospective temporal reach of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), 42 U.S.C. Secs. 9601-9657. See, e.g., United States v. Monsanto Co., 858 F.2d 160, 173-74 (4th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1106, 109 S.Ct. 3156, 104 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1989); United States v. Northeastern Pharmaceutical & Chem. Co., 810 F.2d 726, 741 (8th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 848, 108 S.Ct. 146, 98 L.Ed.2d 102 (1987); United States v. Hooker Chems. & Plastics Corp., 680 F.Supp. 546, 556 (W.D.N.Y.1988). We do not agree that the scope of the retrospective effect associated with the Coal Act is unprecedented, or even notably great. As with CERCLA and the Black Lung Benefits Act upheld in Turner Elkhorn, the Coal Act triggers current and future liabilities on the basis of past actions, in this case the hiring and firing of workers and the signing of a National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement. The Coal Act contains no requirement that signatory operators pay for health benefits delivered prior to the effective date of the statute. Thus, the financial impact of the Coal Act on assigned operators is strictly prospective: only the weight and duration of the funding burdens vary according to past acts. Our review of the record convinces us that the degree of retrospective effect imposed on LTV by the Coal Act is commensurate with LTV's share of responsibility for the coal miner retiree health benefit crisis as rationally apportioned by Congress. In any event, we find no support for LTV's argument that the Coal Act's degree of retroactivity violates the Due Process Clause.
57 We agree with the district court that its exercise of jurisdiction over LTV's Takings Clause claim was proper pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1331(a). We find no merit to the government's suggestion that the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1491(a), acts to remove from the federal district courts jurisdiction over an action for declaratory relief where no money damages have been requested. The Tucker Act vests original jurisdiction over suits seeking compensation from the United States under the Constitution in the United States Court of Federal Claims. The jurisdiction of the Federal Claims Court over such actions is exclusive, except that the federal district courts have concurrent jurisdiction over cases in which the amount in controversy is less than $10,000. See 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1346(a)(2). The jurisdiction of the Claims Court depends entirely upon the presence of a claim for money damages. See Gentry v. United States, 546 F.2d 343, 355 (Cl.Ct.1976) (Our authority to issue a declaratory judgment is limited.... We are authorized to do so only where 'it is tied and subordinate to a monetary award.' ) (quoting Austin v. United States, 206 Ct.Cl. 719, 723, cert. denied, 423 U.S. 911, 96 S.Ct. 215, 46 L.Ed.2d 140 (1975)); Kennedy v. United States, 19 Cl.Ct. 69, 75 (Cl.Ct.1989) (dismissal is required where the relief sought is other than monetary compensation). Thus, the question of jurisdiction in this case masks a broader question of ripeness: Can a takings claim ever be brought in a district court without first seeking compensation in the Court of Federal Claims? 58 On their face, the Supreme Court's decisions on federal Takings Clause jurisdiction have not been consonant. Certain obiter dicta, if taken literally, would preclude our jurisdiction over LTV's takings claim on grounds of ripeness. See First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304, 314, 107 S.Ct. 2378, 2385, 96 L.Ed.2d 250 (1987) (The Fifth Amendment does not prohibit the taking of private property, but instead places a condition on the exercise of that power.); Williamson County Regional Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172, 195, 105 S.Ct. 3108, 3121, 87 L.Ed.2d 126 (1985) ([T]akings claims against the Federal Government are premature until the property owner has availed itself of the process provided by the Tucker Act.); Preseault v. Interstate Commerce Comm'n, 494 U.S. 1, 11, 110 S.Ct. 914, 921, 108 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990) (The Takings Clause is satisfied when at the time of the taking the government makes available a reasonable, certain and adequate provision for obtaining compensation (internal quotations and citations omitted).); see also Regional Rail Reorganization Act Cases, 419 U.S. 102, 126, 95 S.Ct. 335, 349-50, 42 L.Ed.2d 320 (1974) (To determine whether a district court has jurisdiction over a statutory takings claim, the proper inquiry is not whether the statute expresses an affirmative showing of congressional intent to permit recourse to a Tucker Act remedy, but rather whether Congress has in the [statute] withdrawn the Tucker Act grant of jurisdiction to the [Claims Court] to hear a suit involving the [statute] 'founded ... upon the Constitution.' ); Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986, 1019, 104 S.Ct. 2862, 2881, 81 L.Ed.2d 815 (1984) (District court jurisdiction over takings claims requires a demonstration of Congress's unambiguous intention to withdraw the Tucker Act remedy.). Yet in Duke Power, the Court appears to have explicitly endorsed district courts' exercise of jurisdiction over declaratory judgment actions founded on the Takings Clause, even when no prior attempt to secure compensation in the Federal Claims Court has been made. 5 Consistent with the latter approach, the Court has in several recent cases adjudicated takings claims on appeal from district courts without reference to Tucker Act jurisdiction or a finding of unambiguous Congressional intent to withdraw it. See Concrete Pipe, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2289-92; Connolly v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 475 U.S. 211, 221-28, 106 S.Ct. 1018, 1024-28, 89 L.Ed.2d 166 (1986). Thus, we are left with the task of reconciling the broad jurisdictional statements of Preseault, Williamson County, and Monsanto with the more specific language of Duke Power in light of the Court's actual exercise of jurisdiction in Concrete Pipe and Connolly. We resolve this apparent inconsistency by looking not so much to what the Supreme Court has said, but to what it has done. We conclude that a distinction must be drawn between (a) statutes burdening real and tangible property, and (b) those requiring direct transfers of money to the government. The jurisdictional ripeness analysis must take account of the nature of the alleged statutory taking. The Williamson County/ Preseault approach--that is, withholding district court jurisdiction on grounds of ripeness until a plaintiff shows that a claim for compensation in the Federal Claims Court has been or would be unsuccessful--has been applied only where real or tangible property was physically invaded, regulated, or otherwise burdened by legislative action. As the Court's exercise of jurisdiction in Connolly and Concrete Pipe makes clear, however, different rules apply to statutes mandating financial contributions to benefit funds. We hold that where the challenged statute requires a person or entity to pay money to the government, it must be presumed that Congress had no intention of providing compensation for the deprivation through the Tucker Act. Common sense dictates such a presumption. For example, in the case of the Black Lung Act, which required mining companies to contribute funds for the benefit of afflicted former miners, it would make no sense to presume that Congress intended for the Treasury to compensate mining companies for their contributions because the Act lacks an express Congressional statement to the contrary. Such a presumption would tend to nullify all existing legislation adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life: Every dollar paid pursuant to a statute would be presumed to generate a dollar of Tucker Act compensation. Instead, we hold that the Williamson County/ Preseault presumption of Tucker Act availability must be reversed where the challenged statute, rather than burdening real or physical property, requires a direct transfer of funds to the government. 6 Otherwise, we would have to hold, as we cannot, that the Supreme Court wrongly exercised jurisdiction over the takings claims in Concrete Pipe and Connolly. 59 In any event, our jurisdiction over this case is proper in light of the fact that LTV seeks only declaratory relief on its takings claim. As noted above, under the Tucker Act the Federal Claims Court has no jurisdiction where no claim for monetary relief is involved. Given the clear availability of declaratory relief for asserted Takings Clause violations, see Duke Power, 438 U.S. at 71, 98 S.Ct. at 2629, federal jurisdiction over those claims must therefore vest in the district courts. 7 60 We turn next to the merits of LTV's takings claim. Where legislation adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life withstands due process review, it would be surprising indeed to discover that Congress had thereby committed an unconstitutional taking. Connolly, 475 U.S. at 223, 106 S.Ct. at 1025. Given the propriety of the governmental power to regulate, it cannot be said that the Taking Clause is violated whenever legislation requires one person to use his or her assets for the benefit of another. Id. Our task is to conduct an ad hoc, factual inquir[y] into the circumstances of this case. Id. at 224, 106 S.Ct. at 1026. We are to attach particular significance to three factors: (1) 'the economic impact of the regulation on the claimant'; (2) 'the extent to which the regulation has interfered with distinct investment-backed expectations'; and (3) 'the character of the governmental action.'  Id. at 224-25, 106 S.Ct. at 1026 (quoting Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 124, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 2659, 57 L.Ed.2d 631 (1978)). We examine each factor in turn. 61 Where a regulation mandates contributions to a benefit fund, the proper yardstick of economic impact is that of proportionality. Our assessment of economic impact is not made in a vacuum ... but directly depends on the relationship between the employer and the plan to which it had made contributions. Id., 475 U.S. at 225, 106 S.Ct. at 1026. We conclude that LTV has failed to show that its Coal Act liability will be out of proportion to its experience with the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Trusts. Id. at 226, 106 S.Ct. at 1027. 62 LTV's obligation to contribute to the Combined Fund derives from Congress's rational decision to require the entire class of signatory coal mine operators to fulfill their promises of lifetime health benefits for retirees. As a leading member of the BCOA, LTV participated in the collective bargaining that created the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Trusts and in their operation for nearly four decades. Moreover, the employment relationship supplies the rational link by which LTV's Coal Act premiums are tied to its past experience with the benefit plans. As with the other signatory operators, the size of LTV's annual contribution depends entirely on the number of its former employees receiving benefits from the Combined Fund. By thus mooring a given company's funding obligations to a legitimate measure of its prior benefit from the UMWA health care system, the Coal Act rationally apportions future financial responsibility according to past participation. Consequently, we are not confronted with a case of Congress  'forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.'  Penn Central, 438 U.S. at 123-24, 98 S.Ct. at 2659 (1978) (quoting Armstrong v. United States, 364 U.S. 40, 49, 80 S.Ct. 1563, 1569, 4 L.Ed.2d 1554 (1960)). We believe that LTV's liability under the Coal Act permissibly reflects its experience with the Benefit Trusts and the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreements. 63 Furthermore, as the district court observed, [t]he fact that [the Coal] Act has provisions intended to mitigate its economic impact also has been held to be a factor that weighs in favor of its constitutionality. In re Chateaugay, 163 B.R. at 960. See also Connolly, 475 U.S. at 225-26, 106 S.Ct. at 1026-27. We note that while the assigned operators may eventually have to bear some of the costs of providing benefits to the industry's orphaned retirees, the Coal Act contains several provisions mitigating that burden. First, the transfer of $210 million from the 1950 Pension Fund in the Combined Fund's first three fiscal years will eliminate the unassigned beneficiary and death benefit premiums for all assigned operators in at least the first two of those years. The second series of transfers from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund will continue until at least 2004, potentially totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. By thus minimizing LTV's financial responsibility for retirees it never employed, the Coal Act reinforces the centrality of the employment relationship to the imposition of liability. 64 Neither do we find that the size of LTV's Coal Act assessments, viewed in isolation, render the burden constitutionally impermissible. As the district court observed, very large obligations, or diminutions in value or net worth have been upheld on numerous occasions. Slip op. at 10-11, JA 27-28 (citing cases). [M]ere diminution in the value of property, however serious, is insufficient to demonstrate a taking. Concrete Pipe, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2291 (upholding required payment equalling 46% of shareholder equity). See also Connolly, 475 U.S. at 222, 106 S.Ct. at 1024-25 (25% of company's net worth). We note that LTV's allegations about the oppressiveness of these assessments are substantially undermined by LTV's own words. At its bankruptcy confirmation hearing, LTV's chief financial officer conceded that the Coal Act obligations will not interfere with LTV's ability to emerge from bankruptcy and return to profitability. Transcript of Confirmation Hearing at 135-56, In re Chateaugay, No. 86-B-11270 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y. May 26, 1993) (We will waive this condition precedent to effectiveness.... This liability was included in all of our projections and we are comfortable with the viability of the company, even if it still has to service this obligation.); JA 561-62. 65 The second factor to be considered is the degree to which the Coal Act interferes with LTV's reasonable investment-backed expectations. As noted above, we believe that LTV could reasonably have expected to be held accountable for its promise of lifetime health benefits to its workers. LTV argues that the Coal Act destroys the legitimate contractual expectations of the parties to the NBCWAs. LTV points out that the Wage Agreements expressly limited the duration of signatory operators' duty to pay for those promises. Though it is true that LTV's contractual liability has been held to have terminated at the expiration of the 1984 Wage Agreement, see In re Chateaugay, 945 F.2d at 1211, the terms of the NBCWAs cannot limit Congress's authority to enact subsequent legislation requiring the coal industry to fulfill its promises. As Connolly explained: 66 Contracts ... cannot fetter the constitutional authority of Congress. Contracts may create rights of property, but when contracts deal with a subject matter which lies within the control of Congress, they have a congenital infirmity. Parties cannot remove their transactions from the reach of dominant constitutional power by making contracts about them. Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co., 294 U.S. 240, 307-08, 55 S.Ct. 407, 416, 79 L.Ed. 885 (1935). 67 If the regulatory statute is otherwise within the powers of Congress, therefore, its application may not be defeated by private contractual provisions. For the same reason, the fact that legislation disregards or destroys existing contractual rights does not always transform the regulation into an illegal taking. 68 475 U.S. at 223-24, 106 S.Ct. at 1025. Accord Concrete Pipe, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2290 (quoting Connolly ). A regulatory statute which, like the Coal Act, does not authorize the United States to take anything for its own use and only nullifie[s] a contractual provision limiting liability by imposing an additional obligation that is otherwise within the power of Congress to impose does not violate the Takings Clause. Connolly, 475 U.S. at 224, 106 S.Ct. at 1025-26. We hold that the contractual limitation on LTV's liability to the Benefit Trusts fails to obstruct Congress's ability to impose a new and ongoing liability. 69 As to the legitimacy of LTV's alleged expectations, we reject LTV's contention that it was reasonable to expect to be held no more accountable than society at large for the health care of its retired coal miners. As a voluntary, active participant in the creation and operation of the Benefit Trusts, LTV was familiar with the federal government's involvement in the regulation of the UMWA and other benefit plans. Against that backdrop, LTV's claim that it expected to unload its retiree health care liabilities onto the remaining operators without ever paying another dollar rings hollow. In light of the fact that LTV benefitted enormously from the Wage Agreements, from the labor of its former employees, and from the promise of lifetime health benefits that in part attracted them, any interference wrought by the Coal Act with LTV's expectations was interference with unreasonable, not reasonable, expectations. 70 We turn finally to the nature of the governmental action involved. It is well settled that a ' taking may more readily be found when the interference with property can be characterized as a physical invasion by government, than when interference arises from some public program adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote the common good.'  Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass'n v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 490 n. 18, 107 S.Ct. 1232, 1244 n. 18, 94 L.Ed.2d 472 (1987) (quoting Penn Central, 438 U.S. at 124, 98 S.Ct. at 2659) (citations omitted). The Coal Act entails no physical invasion of property, nor any permanent confiscation of LTV's assets for governmental use. On the contrary, the Coal Act squarely falls within the category of legislation that serves to adjust the benefits and burdens of economic life on behalf of the common good. 71 In fact, we find that the Coal Act closely resembles the withdrawal liability provisions of the MPPAA found constitutional in Concrete Pipe, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2289-92, and Connolly, 475 U.S. at 221-28, 106 S.Ct. at 1024-28. The MPPAA required any employer withdrawing from multi-employer pension plans to pay its pro rata share of the plan's vested unfunded liabilities. As did the MPPAA, the Coal Act seeks to restore financial stability and viability to multiemployer benefit plans threatened by employer withdrawals. Both Acts calculated financial contributions on a proportional basis, reflecting a given employer's prior experience with the plan. The fact that Congress has required LTV to transfer resources to the Combined Fund for the benefit of a discrete, private group--in this case, LTV's former employees and some of the industry's orphaned retirees--does not by itself constitute a taking. Congress's authority to create[ ] burdens for some that directly benefit others is well established. Connolly, 475 U.S. at 223, 106 S.Ct. at 1025. By holding LTV to its promises to prevent the collapse of the coal industry's retiree health benefit scheme, the Coal Act surely serves to promote[ ] the common good. Id. at 225, 106 S.Ct. at 1026. 72 In conclusion, we find that all three factors weigh against a finding that the Coal Act effects an illegal taking. Accordingly, we hold that the Coal Act does not violate the Takings Clause.