Pennsylvania State Ass'n of Jury Commissioners v. Commonwealth

53 A.3d 109, 2012 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 219
CourtCommonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJuly 26, 2012
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 53 A.3d 109 (Pennsylvania State Ass'n of Jury Commissioners v. Commonwealth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pennsylvania State Ass'n of Jury Commissioners v. Commonwealth, 53 A.3d 109, 2012 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 219 (Pa. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinions

OPINION BY

Judge BROBSON.

In this original jurisdiction matter, Petitioners, Pennsylvania State Association of Jury Commissioners, its President, Larry A. Thomson, and individual jury commissioners of various Pennsylvania counties (hereafter collectively “Jury Commissioners Association”) seek declaratory and in-junctive relief relating to Act 108 of 2011 (Act 108).1 After the pleadings in this matter closed, the Jury Commissioners Association and Intervenor County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (County Commissioners)2 filed motions for judgment on the pleadings, which are now before this Court.

The title of Act 108 describes it as an act that amends the County Code,3 “further providing for applicability, for the abolishment of the office of jury commissioner and for sales of personal property and surplus farm products.”4 Thus, the title of Act 108 provides a description of the provisions of the County Code that it amended. The subsequent provisions of Act 108 then identify the amended provisions as Sections 102(a), 401, and 1805(b) of the County Code. The amendments have the effect of granting counties (through the county commissioners or other governing body) additional authority with regard to elected officers and contracts.5 Specifically, Act 108 amended Section 401 of the County Code, pertaining to “Enumeration of Elected Officers,” to add subsection (f), which provides county commissioners with the additional authority to abolish the office of jury commissioner in second class A counties or counties of the third through eighth class.6 Subsection (f) provides:

[112]*112After review of the procedures in effect within the county to ensure that lists of potential jurors are a representative cross section of the community, the governing body of a county of the second class A or third through eighth class may adopt, by a majority vote, a resolution abolishing the office of jury commissioner. Upon approval of the resolution, the office of jury commissioner shall ex■pire at the completion of the current jury commissioners’ terms of office. The resolution shall not be passed in any year in which the office of jury commissioner is on the ballot.

Act 108 also amended Section 1805(b) of the County Code, pertaining to “Sales of Personal Property and Surplus Farm Products,” to provide county commissioners with additional authority to exercise their power to sell certain county property through online and electronic auctions.7

The Jury Commissioners Association raises several constitutional challenges to Act 108:(1) the Act violates Article III, Section 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution by addressing more than one subject; (2) the Act violates the separation of powers doctrine and Article V, Sections 1 and 10 of the Pennsylvania Constitution; and (3) the Act violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution on vagueness grounds.

I. ARTICLE III, SECTION 3 OF THE PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTION

Article III, Section 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides:

No bill shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title, except a general appropriation bill or a bill codifying or compiling the law or a part thereof.

As our Supreme Court has noted, the “twin requirements” of Article III, Section 3 are “that each bill have only one subject, and that the subject be clearly expressed in the title.” City of Philadelphia v. Commonwealth, 575 Pa. 542, 572, 838 A.2d 566, 585 (2003). In City of Philadelphia, our Supreme Court described the reasons why Pennsylvanians incorporated Article III, Section 3 into the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1874, including distrust of corporate influence upon the General Assembly and a resulting desire to make the deliberative process of legislative enactment more visible to our citizens. Id. at 573-74, 838 A.2d at 585-86. By adopting Article III, Section 3, Pennsylvanians sought to address a number of practices that members of the General Assembly occasionally employed to obtain passage of legislation without subjecting the legislation to an open and deliberative process.8

[113]*113In City of Philadelphia, our Supreme Court reviewed the analysis that our courts have applied in cases where a party challenged legislation as violating Article III, Section 3. Legislation generally satisfies this provision, the Supreme Court noted, when provisions added to a bill “assist in carrying out a bill’s main objective or are otherwise ‘germane’ to the bill’s subject as reflected in its title.” Id. at 575, 838 A.2d at 587. The Supreme Court surveyed the developed law on Article III, Section 3 and observed that the courts had shifted from strictly applying the test for “germaneness” to applying a more deferential approach to legislation, whereby the courts validated laws containing more than one topic “so long as those topics can reasonably be viewed as falling under one broad subject.” Id. As the Supreme Court summarized: “While this trend is consistent in principle with some early pronouncements of this Court, it has resulted in a situation where germaneness has, in effect, been diluted to the point where it has been assessed according to whether the court can fashion a single, over-arching topic to loosely relate the various subjects included in the statute under review.” Id. at 576-77, 838 A.2d at 587.

After reviewing many of those decisions, our Supreme Court expressed the view that “exercising deference by hypothesizing reasonably broad topics in this manner is appropriate to some degree, because it helps ensure that Article III does not become a license for the judiciary to ‘exercise a pedantic tyranny over the efforts of the Legislature.’ ” Id. at 578, 838 A.2d at 588 (quoting In re Com., Dep’t of Transp., 511 Pa. 620, 626, 515 A.2d 899, 902 (1986)). The Supreme Court noted that some limits on such hypothesizing is necessary, because, otherwise, courts could uphold legislation no matter how diverse the topics of particular legislation. Id. at 578, 838 A.2d at 588. In other words, the over-arching subject test could swallow the single-subject requirement whole, rendering Article III, Section 3- inert to address the evils for which Pennsylvanians originally adopted the measure. Id.

The Supreme Court’s analysis was ultimately guided by comparing the purposes behind the single-subject requirement (and the evils sought to be avoided by application of the requirement) .to the act that was the subject of the appeal:

Last-minute consideration of important measures, logrolling, mixing substantive provisions in omnibus bills, low visibility and hasty enactment of important, and sometimes corrupt, legislation, and the attachment of unrelated provisions to bills in the amendment process — to name a few of these abuses — led to the adoption of constitutional provisions restricting the legislative process. These constitutional provisions seek generally to require a more open and deliberative state legislative process,

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Related

Pennsylvania State Ass'n of Jury Commissioners v. Commonwealth
64 A.3d 611 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 2013)
Pennsylvania State Ass'n of Jury Commissioners v. Commonwealth
53 A.3d 109 (Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, 2012)

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53 A.3d 109, 2012 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 219, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pennsylvania-state-assn-of-jury-commissioners-v-commonwealth-pacommwct-2012.