550
Stevens, J., dissenting
this purpose. Eastern was once in the coal business and employed many of the beneficiaries, but it was not responsible for their expectation of lifetime health benefits or for the perilous financial condition of the 1950 and 1974 plans which put the benefits in jeopardy. As the plurality opinion discusses in detail, the expectation was created by promises and agreements made long after Eastern left the coal business. Eastern was not responsible for the resulting chaos in the funding mechanism caused by other coal companies leaving the framework of the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement. Ante, at 535-536. This case is far outside the bounds of retroactivity permissible under our law.
Finding a due process violation in this case is consistent with the principle that "under the deferential standard of review applied in substantive due process challenges to economic legislation there is no need for mathematical precision in the fit between justification and means." Concrete Pipe, supra, at 639 (citing Turner Elkhorn, 428 U. S., at 19). Statutes may be invalidated on due process grounds only under the most egregious of circumstances. This case represents one of the rare instances in which even such a permissive standard has been violated.
Application of the Coal Act to Eastern would violate the proper bounds of settled due process principles, and I concur in the plurality's conclusion that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.
Some appellate judges are better historians than others. With respect to the central issue resolved by the Coal Act of 1992, I am persuaded that the consensus among the Circuit Judges who have appraised the issue is more accurate than the views of this Court's majority.1 The uneasy truce
1 See ante, at 535-536 (plurality opinion of OTMConnor, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia and Thomas, JJ.); ante, at 539, 549 and this page (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment and dissenting in part).
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