530
Opinion of OTMConnor, J.
That liability is not, of course, a permanent physical occupation of Eastern's property of the kind that we have viewed as a per se taking. See Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419, 441 (1982). But our decisions upholding the MPPAA suggest that an employer's statutory liability for multiemployer plan benefits should reflect some "proportion[ality] to its experience with the plan." Concrete Pipe, 508 U. S., at 645 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Connolly, supra, at 225 (noting that employer's liability under the MPPAA "directly depend[ed] on the relationship between the employer and the plan to which it had made contributions"). In Concrete Pipe and Connolly, the employers had "voluntarily negotiated and maintained a pension plan which was determined to be within the strictures of ERISA," Concrete Pipe, supra, at 646 (internal quotation marks omitted); Connolly, supra, at 227, and consequently, the statutory liability was linked to the employers' conduct.
Here, however, while Eastern contributed to the 1947 and 1950 W&R Funds, it ceased its coal mining operations in 1965 and neither participated in negotiations nor agreed to make contributions in connection with the Benefit Plans under the 1974, 1978, or subsequent NBCWA's. It is the latter agreements that first suggest an industry commitment to the funding of lifetime health benefits for both retirees and their family members. Although EACC continued mining coal until 1987 as a subsidiary of Eastern, Eastern's liability under the Act bears no relationship to its ownership of EACC; the Act assigns Eastern responsibility for benefits relating to miners that Eastern itself, not EACC, employed, while EACC would be assigned the responsibility for any miners that it had employed. See 26 U. S. C. § 9706(a). Thus, the Act does not purport, as Justice Breyer suggests, post, at 566, to assign liability to Eastern based on the " 'last man out' problem" that developed after benefits were significantly expanded in 1974. During the years in which
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