Cite as: 524 U. S. 498 (1998)
Syllabus
benefits for retirees and their dependents. During the years that Eastern employed miners, such benefits were far less extensive than under the 1974 NBCWA, were unvested, and were fully subject to alteration or termination. To the extent that Eastern may be able to seek indemnification from EACC or Peabody under contractual arrangements that might insure Eastern against liabilities arising out of its former coal operations, that indemnity is neither enhanced nor supplanted by the Coal Act and does not affect the availability of the declaratory relief sought here. Respondents' argument that the Coal Act moderates and mitigates the economic impact by allocating some of Eastern's former employees to signatories of the 1978 NBCWA is unavailing. That Eastern is not forced to bear the burden of lifetime benefits for all of its former employees does not mean that its liability is not a significant economic burden.
For similar reasons, the Coal Act substantially interferes with East-ern's reasonable investment-backed expectations. It operates retroactively, reaching back 30 to 50 years to impose liability based on Eastern's activities between 1946 and 1965. Retroactive legislation is generally disfavored. It presents problems of unfairness because it can deprive citizens of legitimate expectations and upset settled transactions. General Motors Corp. v. Romein, 503 U. S. 181, 191. The distance into the past that the Coal Act reaches back to impose liability on Eastern and the magnitude of that liability raise substantial fairness questions. The pre-1974 NBCWA's do not demonstrate that there was an implicit indus-trywide agreement to fund lifetime health benefits at the time that Eastern was involved in the coal industry. The 1947 and 1950 W&R Funds, in which Eastern participated, operated on a pay-as-you-go basis and the classes of beneficiaries were subject to the trustees' discretion. Not until 1974, when ERISA forced revisions to the 1950 W&R Fund and when Eastern was no longer in the industry, could lifetime medical benefits have been viewed as promised. Thus, the Coal Act's scheme for allocating Combined Fund premiums is not calibrated either to East-ern's past actions or to any agreement by the company. Nor would the Federal Government's pattern of involvement in the coal industry have given Eastern sufficient notice that lifetime health benefits might be guaranteed to retirees several decades later. Eastern's liability for such benefits also differs from coal operators' responsibility under the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972, which spread the cost of employment-related disabilities to those who profited from the fruits of the employees' labor, Turner Elkhorn, supra, at 18. Finally, the nature of the governmental action in this case is quite unusual in that Congress' solution to the grave funding problem that it identified singles out certain employers to bear a substantial burden, based on the employers' conduct
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