need for a meaningful nexus between the restriction imposed and the legitimate government purpose). We further noted that “the differential treatment” of the parties specified in the Act was “neither suggestive of punitive purpose nor particularly suspicious.” Id. at 690; see also BellSouth I, 144 F.3d at 67 (finding other portions of the Telecommunications Act to serve rational and nonpunitive purposes and that the selectivity of the Act was “quite understandable without resort to inferences of punitive purpose”). By contrast, other cases make clear that where there exists a significant imbalance between the magnitude of the burden imposed and a purported nonpunitive purpose, the statute cannot reasonably be said to further nonpunitive purposes. See Consol. Edison Co., 292 F.3d at 354 (<HOLDING>). Because such an imbalance belies any
holding that in order for there to be state debt in the constitutional sense one legislature in effect must obligate a future legislature to appropriate funds to discharge the debt created by the first legislature holding that when the legislature enacts a statute it is presumed that the legislature is aware of existing statutes holding that error was plain when the district courts ruling was obviously contrary to the text of a federal statute holding a statute to be a bill of attainder where the legislature piled on a burden that was obviously disproportionate to the harm caused holding that the burden is on the plaintiff