| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | Not listed in the opinion, but Easter Enterprises used to mine coal, and is not being held accountable for health care for miners and their families, even though it got out of the business and only owned a subsidiary. |
| Posture: | Presumably kind of a lot of wrangling, though none is listed. |
| Issue: | Is the requirement that Eastern pay all these benefits an unconstitutional taking? |
| Holding: | Yes. |
| Rule: | Legislation might be unconstitutional if it imposes severe retroactive liability on a limited class of parties that could not have anticipated the liability, and the extent of the liability is substantially disproportionate to the parties' experience. |
| Reasoning: | The legislature is not entrusted with the power to take property from A and give it to B. The desire to better the public condition is not sufficient to shortcut this constitutional protection. Ex post facto may be for criminal laws, but the takings clause fills that function for property rights. |
| Dicta: | Very hard to say what the court really means, given the number of different opinions here. |