JUSTICE TODD.
This is a direct appeal from an order of the Commonwealth Court sustaining the demurrer of the Department of Public Welfare ("DPW") to a complaint filed by three disabled individuals who formerly received cash general assistance benefits from DPW, and seven organizations involved in the provision of a variety of human services to poor and disabled individuals in Pennsylvania (collectively "Appellants"). Appellants alleged in their complaint that the manner in which the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted Act 80 of 2012
To fully understand the constitutional issues presented by this appeal requires a review of the legislative history of Act 80, which is a matter of public record and not in dispute. In the 2011 session of the General Assembly, a three-page bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 1, 2011, designated as H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385.
This bill was referred to the House Committee on Health, which subsequently reported it out of committee for consideration by the full House. H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 was then considered by the full House on three separate days: April 5, April 11, and April 12, 2011. Subsequently, H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 was sent to the Senate on April 25, 2011, and referred to that body's Public Health and Welfare Committee, whereupon it languished, undisturbed, for over 13 months. During this same time period, however, the entirety of the language of this bill was included as an amendment to a separate piece of legislation, which ultimately was signed into law on June 30, 2011 as Act 22 of 2011.
On June 5, 2012, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee revived H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 from its state of dormancy, designated it H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646, removed all of the bill's prior language — which, again, by this time had already been enacted into law — and inserted in its place a variety of provisions.
This newly-constituted bill, now numbering nine pages, was reported out of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee on June 5, 2012, and considered for the first time by the full Senate that same day. H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646 was then considered a second time by that body on June 6, 2012 — after which it was referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
However, revisions to this bill were not yet complete. While H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646 was in the Senate Appropriations Committee, it, once more, underwent substantial transformation. Although the Appropriations Committee kept all of the language of H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646, it re-designated the bill H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884,
The revised bill, which had now grown to 27 pages, was reported out of the Appropriations Committee on June 29, 2012 and passed by the full Senate that same day. Also that same day, H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884 was sent to the House and immediately referred to the Rules Committee, which, after a brief review, transmitted it to the full House. The very next day, June 30, 2012, the House passed H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884 by a final tally of 102-91. Governor Thomas Corbett signed H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884 later that same day, at which point it became Act 80 of 2012, and, according to its terms, took effect on July 1, 2012.
Appellants commenced an action in the Commonwealth Court's original jurisdiction claiming, inter alia, that the manner in which this bill was passed by the legislature violated Article III, Sections 1, 3, and 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
Appellants filed a direct appeal with our Court of the order denying the preliminary injunction. Our Court affirmed the denial of the injunction by per curiam order on September 25, 2013. Washington v. Department of Public Welfare, 621 Pa. 191, 76 A.3d 536 (2013) (order). The matter returned to the Commonwealth Court which was, at that time, still considering DPW's demurrer to Appellants' petition for declaratory and permanent injunctive relief.
On June 24, 2013, an en banc panel of the Commonwealth Court granted DPW's demurrer as to Appellants' claims under Article III, Sections 1, 3, and 4, but overruled DPW's demurrer as to Appellants' challenges to the legislation under Article III, Section 24, Article II, Section 1, and the Commonwealth Documents Law. Thereafter, the parties proceeded with discovery on those remaining claims. However, nearly three years later, in March 2016, Appellants discontinued their challenges under these other constitutional and legal provisions, and the Commonwealth Court entered final judgment in favor of DPW on Appellants' outstanding claims on March 28, 2016. Thus, those claims are not before us in the present appeal.
In its opinion accompanying the granting of DPW's demurrer, the Commonwealth Court explained its rationale for dismissing Appellants' claims under Article III, Sections 1, 3, and 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Washington v. Department of Public Welfare, 71 A.3d 1070 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2013) (en banc).
Next, the Commonwealth Court considered whether Act 80 violated Article III, Section 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution — the "single subject rule" — which mandates that each bill passed by the General Assembly pertain to only one subject. Again, following the teachings of PAGE, the court looked for a unifying subject amongst the various provisions of Act 80. Reasoning that all of the health and human services programs covered by Act 80 work like "parts of a single machine" such that a change to one human services program will affect the others, the court concluded that the multifaceted elements of Act 80 could all be unified under the common theme of "improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the delivery of human services programs to people in need." Id. at 1082. Consequently, the court found Act 80 did not violate Article III, Section 3.
Finally, the Commonwealth Court considered whether Act 80 violated Article III, Section 4. The court characterized that constitutional provision as requiring three "readings" of a bill in each house of the General Assembly.
Since our Court regards the language of our Constitution as the embodiment of the will of the voters who adopted it, Stilp, 905 A.2d at 939, it is instructive to begin our consideration of Appellants' challenges with a brief history of the circumstances which caused the people to include Sections 1, 3, and 4 in Article III of our organic charter of governance, as well as the fundamental purposes which the people intended these amendments to serve. See Scarnati v. Wolf, ___ Pa. ___, 173 A.3d 1110,
By the time of the Civil War, large corporations, particularly the railroads, and other wealthy special interest groups and individuals had acquired such influence over the General Assembly that they routinely secured the passage of legislation which exclusively served their narrow interests to the detriment of the public good. Thomas Raeburn White, Commentaries on the Constitution of Pennsylvania, xxvi (1907) (hereinafter "White"). As a result, during the decade after that conflict ended, the populace became increasingly dissatisfied with the manner in which the General Assembly was functioning, such that the people lost confidence in the legislature's ability to fulfill its most paramount constitutional duty of representing their interests. See Mahlon Hellerich, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1873, 157 (1956) (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania) (on file with University of Pennsylvania) (hereinafter, "Hellerich") (observing that the legislature was regarded at that time "as the tool of special interests, as controlled by lobbyists or `borers,' as filled with corrupt, self-serving men who sold their votes to the highest bidder, as composed of men who practiced extortion upon legitimate businessmen").
The public's dissatisfaction with the General Assembly was fueled in great measure by "abuses and inadequacies in the lawmaking process" which were prevalent at the time. Id. at 167. Such abusive legislative practices included:
Nextel Communications of Mid-Atlantic Inc. v. Commonwealth, Department of Revenue, ___ Pa. ___, 171 A.3d 682, 694 n.14 (2017).
Further, as ably recounted by Professor Hellerich, "[m]embers of the legislature failed to respect the rules of procedure in acting upon various bills and failed to provide safeguards against theft or fraudulent insertion in the transmission of bills between both houses or from the legislature to the governor," such as a requirement that bills be read before they were passed. Hellerich at 167; see also Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention 1967-68, Ref. Manual No. 1, at 5 (noting that "legislative procedure had gotten sloppy and sometimes was grossly disregarded," which resulted, inter alia, in "hasty amendments of the most important character ... being adopted without those amendments being read").
This lack of protection for the transparency of the legislative process enabled various legal provisions, usually crafted for the benefit of a particular corporation, special interest group, or individual, to be surreptitiously inserted into a lengthy bill, often just before the final vote on it without
The public clamor for an end to these practices became so intense that, in 1873, the voters overwhelmingly approved, by a margin of 5-1, the holding of a constitutional convention for the twin purposes of reforming the legislative process and the outlawing of all special legislation. Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention 1967-68, Ref. Manual No. 1, at 5. To end the aforementioned abuses, and to ensure that, thereafter, regular procedures would be followed by the General Assembly in the passage of all legislation, the delegates to the 1873 convention adopted, and the voters approved in 1874, Article III of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Each of Article Ill's provisions was specifically designed to eliminate one of the myriad objectionable legislative practices the Commonwealth's citizenry viewed with intense disfavor.
Relevant to the case sub judice, Article III, Section 1 was newly adopted by the 1873 convention and intended to abolish the practice of attaching "riders" to bills at various points in the legislative process by barring the addition of proposed legislation on a subject matter unrelated to that of the bill as originally introduced. White at 211. Thus, its objective was to give legislators considering a bill sufficient notice of all of its provisions so that "they might vote on it with circumspection." Consumer Party of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth, 510 Pa. 158, 507 A.2d 323, 334 (1986).
Article III, Section 3, was crafted to prevent the use of "omnibus bills" which combined multiple pieces of legislation, each pertaining to a different subject, into one bill.
The version of Article III, Section 4 adopted by the 1873 convention and passed by the electorate in 1874 required every bill to be "read at length on three different days in each House." Pa. Const. of 1874, art. Ill, § 4. This was intended to prevent the secret insertion of provisions into a bill, prior to legislators' deliberations and
Our Court has recognized that, consistent with the intent of the electorate who ratified the 1874 Constitution, the overarching purpose of these and the other restrictions on the legislative process contained in Article III was to furnish essential constitutional safeguards to ensure our Commonwealth's government is open, deliberative, and accountable to the people it serves. City of Philadelphia v. Commonwealth, 575 Pa. 542, 838 A.2d 566, 585 (2003); John L. Gedid, "History of the Pennsylvania Constitution" as appearing in Ken Gormley, ed., The Pennsylvania Constitution A Treatise on Rights and Liberties, 68 (2004) ("Requiring a single subject and statement of that subject in the title of a bill, as well as controls on altering bills to change their nature during the passage process without revealing the change, prevented "stealth" legislation in which some legislators might be misled about the contents of a bill, and also enabled the public to know and follow what the legislature was doing."). Such procedural requirements are integral to the preservation of the people's freedom from the yoke of secretive laws passed without full public awareness and debate. See Malinski v. New York, 324 U.S. 401, 414, 65 S.Ct. 781, 89 S.Ct. 1029 (1945) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) ("The history of American freedom is, in no small measure, the history of procedure."). Consequently, as these provisions are mandatory constitutional directives from the people, not mere advisory guidelines, the General Assembly must comply with them in the course of the legislative process. City of Philadelphia, 838 A.2d at 581. For the same reason, "the judicial branch cannot ignore a clear violation because of a false sense of deference to the prerogatives of a sister branch of government." Consumer Party, 507 A.2d at 334.
Article III, Section 1 has remained unchanged since its inclusion in the 1874 Constitution. Article III, Section 3 was slightly altered in our present (1968) Constitution to permit bills to contain multiple subjects if they merely codify or compile extant laws or parts of laws, but this alteration did not weaken the amendment's firm prohibition on legislation covering different subject matters being passed in a single omnibus bill. Pa. Const., art. Ill, § 3.
Article III, Section 4 was changed in 1967 when voters approved an amendment passed by the General Assembly that deleted the requirement that every bill be "read at length on three different days in each House," and replaced it with a requirement that every bill be "considered on three different days in each House."
Significantly, however, when the legislature adopted the amendment revising Article III, Section 4 in 1966, it rejected an effort to shorten the "three different days" requirement, even in situations when the Commonwealth is facing nuclear war, natural disaster, or a national emergency. House Legislative Journal, 2881 (1966). As originally proposed, the amendment would have allowed waiver of the "three different days" requirement if 90 percent of the members of each House declared it to be an "emergency measure"; whereupon, it could then be passed by each House after only one day of consideration. Id. This waiver provision was stricken from the amendment by the General Assembly after debate, during which the proponents of its removal stressed the integral role the "three different days" requirement plays in the proper functioning of the legislative process.
As noted by Representative Stauffer, the author of the amendment to remove the emergency waiver provision:
House Legislative Journal, 2881, 2929 (1966); see also House Legislative Journal, 2881 (Remarks by Representative Gelfand) ("At times, the only protection that one has who desires to give full consideration of legislation is the fact that legislation must go through this body on three separate days and receive three days of consideration."). Thereafter, the House approved the removal of the emergency waiver provision on a vote of 110-89, and the Senate unanimously concurred. Article III, Section 4, with its current explicit requirements that every bill be considered by each house of the General Assembly on three different days, was then ratified by the voters in May 1967.
It is apparent that, despite this change in its language, Article III, Section 4 continues to serve the same critical purpose as it did at its inception — namely, ensuring an open and deliberative legislative process in which all legislators are given a full opportunity to scrutinize a bill and offer changes which they may deem necessary, and to also make certain that, during this process, every member of the public has the opportunity to make his or her views known to their representatives and senators on all provisions of a bill before its final passage.
As detailed above, and discussed infra, the three versions of H.B. 1261 — P.N. 1385, 3646, and 3884 — each contained significantly dissimilar provisions, and no one version of this bill containing all of the provisions of Act 80 was considered by either the House or the Senate on three separate days; thus, under these circumstances, we perceive the paramount constitutional question for our consideration to be whether the requirements of Article III, Section 4 were complied with during the legislative process.
As this matter comes to us as an appeal from the Commonwealth Court's order granting a demurrer, we are required to accept as truthful all well-pleaded material facts and all inferences fairly deducible from those facts. Robinson Township v. Commonwealth, 623 Pa. 564, 83 A.3d 901, 987 (2013). Whenever it is the defendant who is the moving party, we may affirm the grant of the demurrer only if the plaintiff is not entitled to relief as a matter of law. Id. Inasmuch as a constitutional challenge is a pure question of law, our review is plenary; thus, we need not defer to a lower court's resolution of this issue. Id. (quoting Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission v. Commonwealth, 587 Pa. 347, 899 A.2d 1085, 1094 (2006)).
We are also guided in our review by the "presumption that our sister branches take seriously their constitutional oaths." Stilp, 905 A.2d at 938. Consequently, legislation enjoys a presumption of constitutionality, which extends to the manner in which it was passed. Neiman, 84 A.3d at 611. A statute is, therefore, presumed valid, and it will not be found unconstitutional unless it "clearly, palpably, and plainly violates the Constitution." Id. For that reason, the burden of proof for any litigant seeking to meet this standard is high, and any doubts will be resolved in favor of a finding of the statute's constitutionality. Id.
As discussed supra, in interpreting a constitutional provision, we view it as an expression of the popular will of the voters who adopted it, and, thus, construe its language in the manner in which it was understood by those voters. Stilp, 905 A.2d at 939; Commonwealth v. Harmon, 469 Pa. 490, 366 A.2d 895, 899 (1976). As a result, we do not consider such language in a "technical or strained manner, but are to interpret its words in their popular, natural and ordinary meaning." Scarnati, 173 A.3d at 1118. Accordingly, "we must favor a natural reading which avoids contradictions and difficulties in implementation, which completely conforms to the intent of the framers and which reflects the views of the ratifying voter." In re Bruno, 627 Pa. 505, 101 A.3d 635, 659 (2014) (quoting Commonwealth ex rel. Paulinski v. Isaac, 483 Pa. 467, 397 A.2d 760, 766 (1979)).
As we have emphasized previously, "[o]ur ultimate touchstone is the actual language of the Constitution itself." Stilp, 905 A.2d at 939. The language of Article III, Section 4 is direct and unequivocal, "[e]very bill shall be considered on three different days in each House." Pa. Const. art. III, § 4. The term "bill" refers to a piece of legislation which includes, in its entirety, all the language of a proposed law which the General Assembly is being asked to consider and take official action on. See Scudder v. Smith, 331 Pa. 165, 200 A. 601, 604 (1938) ("A bill is the draft or form of an act presented to the legislature, but not enacted."). Accordingly, we initially reject any contention that, merely because a bill designated "H.B. 1261" was considered
To the contrary, we read the three-day consideration requirement in accordance with the above-discussed intent of the framers and the wishes of the voters who approved it — to secure an open and deliberative legislative process in which the public has the opportunity to become aware of pending legislation and express their views on it to their elected representative. Thus, we view this obligation as a mandate that the substantive contents of a bill — i.e., the specific language or other means by which the bill will change or supplement the Commonwealth's existing laws — be considered on three different days, so that every legislator and all members of the public are fully apprised of how the laws of Pennsylvania will be altered by the bill. Therefore, the dispositive constitutional question is whether each House considered on three separate days a version of H.B. 1261 which contained the same substantive provisions enacted into law as Act 80.
Hence, while it is true that the first version of H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 was considered by the House on three separate days in 2011 (April 5, April 11, and April 12), the initial substantive provisions of this bill — requiring the use of residency as an eligibility factor for the receipt of public assistance benefits — were not, facially, the same substantive provisions contained in the latter two versions of the bill which was considered by the Senate, H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646 and 3884. Indeed, as recounted above, all of the provisions of H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 which had been considered by the House on those three days in 2011 became the subject of another entirely separate piece of legislation that was enacted in 2011 as Act 22. Thus, when those provisions became law, H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385, which was at that time reposing in the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, ceased to be active legislation, as all of its substantive provisions had already been considered and acted upon by the General Assembly. It was then, in every respect, a nullity.
However, the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee gutted all of the provisions of the bill and inserted into its now hollow shell the distinct provisions of H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646. As described above, this reanimated "zombie" bill now addressed the facially different subjects of amending the Adoption Opportunities Act to provide subsidies for adoptive parents, altered the notification and custodianship criteria for kin of dependent children, and created an entirely new program to provide a monetary payment to those individuals who were granted permanent legal custodianship of a dependent child. See supra pp. 1140-41. The only reference H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646 made to the substantive provisions of P.N. 1385 was regarding two minor grammatical alterations to the provisions already enacted by Act 22 of 2011. After being reported out of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646 was considered twice by the full Senate, but not at all by the House.
Further, after H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646 was referred to the Senate Appropriations
Even so, our Court has never held that absolute conformity in a bill's language from its first consideration to its third and final consideration is required in order for Article III, Section 4's requirements to be met. Due to the fundamental nature of standard legislative practice, a regular part of which is the offering of amendments by legislators to change a bill's language, or the insertion and deletion of various provisions, it is expected that a bill will undergo some changes during the course of its passage through each House of the General Assembly. Thus, in assessing a claim that the procedure used to pass a bill violated Article III, Section 4, we have traditionally employed a "germaneness" test which affords due regard for the necessity of preserving flexibility in the legislative crafting process, while maintaining the strength of the safeguards for the regularity and transparency of this process afforded by Article III, Section 4.
This test requires examination of the original subject of the bill and then a determination of whether "the amendments to the bill added during the legislative process are germane to and do not change the general subject of the bill." Stilp, 905 A.2d at 959; Pennsylvania School Boards Association, Inc. v. Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, 569 Pa. 436, 805 A.2d 476, 488 (2002).
Amendments are germane to the original general subject matter of a bill if both the subject of the amendments and the subject of the original contents of the bill "have a nexus to a common purpose." Neiman, 84 A.3d at 612.
Appellants argue that the requirements of Article III, Section 4 have not been met because the final version of H.B. 1261 which became Act 80 — H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884 — was not considered on three different days by both the House and Senate. Appellants point to the fact that the House considered this final version only on one day — June 30, 2012 — when that chamber voted, by a bare one vote majority of its sitting membership, to enact it. The three prior votes the House had taken over 13 months earlier — on April 5, 11, and 12, 2011 — were on the first version of the bill — H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 — which did not contain the final bill's panoply of subjects, but, rather, contained only the public assistance residency requirements. Appellants contend that the Senate, likewise, did not consider H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884 on three separate days, as, prior to its vote on the final version, it had twice considered only the second version of the bill — H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646 — which contained only the adoption/foster parent subsidy and guardianship provisions which had been inserted after the residency requirements had been stripped out.
Appellants acknowledge our Court's holding in PAGE that an amended bill does not have to be referred to a committee and considered on three separate days if such amendments are germane to the original general subject of the bill and do not wholly change that subject. However, Appellants dispute that the provisions which were included in the final version of H.B. 1261 that was passed only once by the House and Senate were germane to the original subject of H.B. 1261. Appellants point out that the original version of H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 contained only the public assistance residency requirements; however, neither the adoption and guardianship subsidies contained in H.B. 1261, P.N. 3646, nor the Pilot Block Grant Program, the welfare to work requirements and noncompliance penalties, the elimination of General Assistance cash benefits, or the extension of the Nursing Home Assessment contained in H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884, were germane to those residency requirements.
Appellants aver that the true purpose of H.B. 1261 was to function as a:
Appellants' Brief at 38. Appellants contend that the use of such last minute "vehicle bills" circumvents the core requirement of Article III, Section 4 that each piece of legislation receive careful and open consideration, and is "precisely the evil that the framers of the Pennsylvania Constitution meant to prevent." Id. at 39.
It is abundantly plain that the peculiar manner in which this legislation was passed is significantly unlike the legislative history of the bills at issue in cases such as Stilp and Pennsylvania School Boards in which we have previously employed the germaneness test under Article III, Section 4. In those cases, the original provisions of a bill establishing its initial subject remained in the bill from its inception until the end of its journey through each House, and additional amendments pertaining to the same subject matter were added to those original provisions during this process. All of the provisions contained in the final bill were deemed to be germane to each other since they could rationally be viewed as working in concert with one another to effectuate a common purpose.
By contrast, in the case at bar, the provisions of H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 were entirely removed from the bill by the Senate, inasmuch as they had already been enacted by another piece of legislation, Act 22 of 2011. Thus, since the original provisions were gone when the new provisions were added by the Senate, it was factually and legally impossible for the new provisions to work together with the deleted provisions to accomplish a single purpose. Indeed, the purpose the original provisions sought to achieve had already been accomplished by other legislative means. We hold that amendments to such enfeebled legislation are not germane as a matter of law. Consequently, the Senate amendments were not germane to the provisions of H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385, and, accordingly, the three times that H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385
Because the Senate's insertion of its own proposed legislation into the then wholly empty shell of H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 transformed it into an entirely new bill consisting solely of those insertions, Article III, Section 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution required this new bill to be considered by both Houses three times thereafter. As it is undisputed that the House considered the Senate's version of H.B. 1261 only once, however, Article III, Section 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution was clearly, plainly and palpably violated.
Accordingly, the order of the Commonwealth Court is reversed, and the entirety of Act 80 is stricken as violative of Article III, Section 4 of our Constitution.
Jurisdiction relinquished.
Justices Donohue, Dougherty and Wecht join the opinion.
Justice Baer files a concurring opinion.
JUSTICE BAER, CONCURRING
I concur in the result of the Majority Opinion holding Act 80 of 2012 unconstitutional. Nevertheless, I am unable to join the rationale to the extent it is based solely on a violation of Article III, Section 4's requirement that "[e]very bill shall be considered on three different days in each House."
As fully explained by the Majority, Section 4 was amended by the voters of this Commonwealth in 1967 to remove the requirement that "[e]very bill shall be read at length on three different days in each House" and replaced it with the mandate that the bill merely be "considered on three different days." PA. CONST. ART. III, § 4 (1874), (1968). Moreover, the 1967 revision maintained the prior distinction between bills, which must be considered on three different days, and amendments, which are addressed in a separate sentence that requires that amendments "be printed for the use of the members before the final vote is taken on the bill." Id. My colleagues recognize that the import of the 1967 alteration was to ensure that the bill be considered three times but not require the onerous process of reading the often-lengthy bills in full three times. Maj. Op. at 1147-48. The Majority additionally acknowledges that Section 4 allows for the legislative process of amendments to improve the bill without restarting the "three different days" requirement. Maj. Op. at 1151.
The difficult question, therefore, is when a court should deem a change in the legislation to constitute an amendment, which does not require consideration on three different days, and when it is new legislation necessitating three separate considerations. This Court has addressed this delicate question in the past by finding violations of Section 4 only in conjunction with violations of either Section 1, which requires the original purpose of the bill to be the same throughout its passage through either house,
The policy requiring a violation of Section 4 only in conjunction with a violation of the single subject or original purpose requirements provides logical guidance to both the courts and the legislature in determining whether a change to a bill is merely an amendment or whether it is in actuality a new bill addressing a different purpose or subject from the original bill. Where an amendment is the same subject and the same purpose, caselaw has delineated it an amendment rather than new legislation. Id.
The Majority Opinion, however, does not address this Court's historical reticence to strike legislation based solely upon an infringement of Section 4, despite the issue being directly addressed by Appellees. Appellee Brief at 23 (observing that "a violation of Section 4 cannot be established without a corresponding violation of Section 1 or Section 3"). Accordingly, I distance myself from the Majority's rationale to the extent it is based on Section 4 alone.
Nevertheless, I fully concur with my colleagues' analysis of Act 80 as failing the germaness test, which the Majority observes is imported from and applicable to Section 3's requirement that the bill contain a single subject. Maj. Op. at 1151 n.33, 1151 n.34. Accordingly, I would hold that Act 80 violates the single subject requirement of Section 3 for the reasons set forth by Majority Opinion in footnote 36 on page 1154 and, thus, that it necessarily also violates Section 4's "three different days" requirement. Thus, I concur in the result of today's decision.
JUSTICE MUNDY, CONCURRING
I join the well-reasoned Majority Opinion. However, I write separately to distance myself from footnote 36, Because the Majority determines that the provisions of H.B. 1261, P.N. 1385 were entirely removed, it is unnecessary to the disposition of the case to engage in a germaneness analysis regarding the deleted subject matter and Act 80. In light of this, I would also refrain from examining the proposed
Except for this point, I agree with the Majority in all other respects.
Pa. Const. art. Ill, § 1.
Pa. Const. art. Ill, § 3.
Pa. Const. art. Ill, § 4.
H.B. 1261, P.N. 3884 (capitalization original).
Likewise, we reject the proposed unifying subject for Act 80 offered by the Commonwealth Court, and endorsed by DPW: "the regulation and funding of human services programs regulated by [DPW]," Washington, 71 A.3d at 1080. This proposed subject is entirely too expansive, as it involves a wide panoply of human service programs established by a multiplicity of statutes, not all of which are contained in the Public Welfare Code.
Additionally, the nursing home assessment program, which was added at the last minute to Act 80, is solely a revenue raising tax to provide medical assistance benefits for individuals in nursing homes, and, consequently, is unlike the other provisions of Act 80 which, instead, are focused on such disparate topics as: establishing criteria for custodianship of dependent children; authorizing and setting eligibility requirements for the disbursement of money for financial assistance to adoptive parents and custodians of dependent children, specifying, for the first time, a procedure in which money appropriated annually for six human service programs — each of which addresses a different human service need — must be accounted for, aggregated and spent by counties; terminating further spending on cash general assistance; and imposing new work requirements and penalty provisions for recipients of medical assistance. As Appellants maintain, DPW's proposed unifying subject is broad enough that it could arguably encompass all of the human service programs in the Commonwealth administered by DPW and funded by the legislature. In accordance with our prior decisions relating to this subject, we deem such a capacious proposed unifying subject to be manifestly inadequate to meet the germaneness requirement. See Leach v. Commonwealth, 636 Pa. 81, 141 A.3d 426, 433-434 (2016) (provisions criminalizing scrap metal theft and granting standing to individuals to challenge the constitutionality of municipalities' lost or stolen gun ordinances could not be unified under the general subjects of "regulation of firearms" or "the ability to own a firearm"); Neiman (holding that the proposed subjects of "refining civil remedies" or "judicial remedies" were too broad to be unifying subjects for multiple provisions of a bill pertaining to: deficiency judgment procedures, statutes of limitations for personal injury actions involving asbestos, delineating the jurisdiction of the county police, and setting sex offender registration requirements); Pennsylvania State Association of Jury Commissioners, 619 Pa. 369, 64 A.3d 611, 619 (2013) (provisions of statute allowing for sale of surplus farm equipment owned by counties, permitting the conduct of online auctions of personal property held by counties, and abolishing the office of jury commissioner could not be unified under the generic topic of "powers of county commissioners").
PA. CONST. ART. III, § 4.
CONST. ART. III, § 1.
