532
Opinion of OTMConnor, J.
insure itself 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 Eastern seeks.
We are also not persuaded by respondents' argument that the Coal Act "moderate[s] and mitigate[s] the economic impact" upon Eastern. See Connolly, 475 U. S., at 225-226. Although Eastern is not assigned the premiums for former employees who later worked for companies that signed the 1978 NBCWA, see 26 U. S. C. §§ 9706(a)(1), (2), Eastern had no control over the activities of its former employees subsequent to its departure from the coal industry in 1965. By contrast, the provisions of the MPPAA that we identified as potentially moderating the employer's liability in Connolly were generally within the employer's control. See 475 U. S., at 226, n. 8. The mere fact that Eastern is not forced to bear the burden of lifetime benefits respecting all of its former employees does not mean that the company's liability for some of those employees is not a significant economic burden.
For similar reasons, the Coal Act substantially interferes with Eastern's reasonable investment-backed expectations. The Act's beneficiary allocation scheme reaches back 30 to 50 years to impose liability against Eastern based on the company's activities between 1946 and 1965. Thus, even though the Act mandates only the payment of future health benefits, it nonetheless "attaches new legal consequences to [an employment relationship] completed before its enactment." Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 270 (1994).
Retroactivity is generally disfavored in the law, Bowen v. Georgetown Univ. Hospital, 488 U. S. 204, 208 (1988), in accordance with "fundamental notions of justice" that have been recognized throughout history, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. v. Bonjorno, 494 U. S. 827, 855 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring). See also, e. g., Dash v. Van Kleeck, 7 Johns. *477, *503 (NY 1811) ("It is a principle in the Eng-
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