PENNSYLVANIA High court to hear cases regarding pay-raise law

Judges will likely have to sort out issues not obvious in the state constitution.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the pay-raise law that passed last summer -- and was repealed last month -- was constitutional, and whether state and county judges should get the additional salary anyway.
The court said it would hear two cases -- a challenge by political activist Gene Stilp that had been dismissed as moot by Commonwealth Court, and a Commonwealth Court lawsuit by a judge seeking to reinstate the higher judicial salaries. The decision to take the cases was made last Thursday and became known when the attorney general's office announced it Tuesday.
The order indicating the court will take the cases said the justices will review the propriety of how the Legislature passed the law giving pay raises to officials in all three branches of state government.
The court said it wants to consider whether it is legal for lawmakers to collect their own raises immediately in the form of "unvouchered expenses," rather than wait until their next election, as the state constitution requires.
What will be scrutinized
The judges will examine whether the pay raise ran afoul of requirements in the state constitution that laws reflect a bill's original purpose, that legislation go through a committee before being heard by the entire Legislature, and that bills must pertain to a single subject and be considered on three separate days.
The justices also will decide whether the pay-raise repeal violated the state constitution's requirement that judges' pay not be diminished "during their terms of office, unless by law applying generally to all salaried officers of the Commonwealth."
Further, the court said it would consider whether the pay-raise repeal was "nonseverable," meaning that if they throw out a portion of it, the whole repeal could be invalidated, thus restoring all pay raises.
"They're important cases, because they do deal with the issue of this section [of law] dealing with judicial independence. They deal with the issue of what is severable and nonseverable, and what are the implications of that. And they deal with the rules on how the General Assembly enacts laws," said Stephen C. MacNett, general counsel to the state Senate's Republicans.
Stilp said Tuesday he plans to ask Justices Sandra Schultz Newman and Russell M. Nigro to recuse themselves from hearing his case. Stilp was active in efforts to unseat the two in November's retention election, in which Nigro was defeated and Newman narrowly retained. Nigro leaves the bench in January.
Chief Justice Ralph J. Cappy has recused himself from considering challenges to the pay raise because he publicly lauded the increase after its July passage, and has acknowledged that he lobbied for it.
"Now the next question is, Can we get justice in Pennsylvania? I'm hoping that there's a little kernel of integrity left in the courts whereby we can. But the people, 12 million people, will be watching," Stilp said.
Interpreting state constitution
The court agreed to hear Stilp's lawsuit as well as the case filed by Philadelphia County Common Pleas Judge John W. Herron, who wants to revive the judicial pay raise only.
Robert C. Heim, Herron's attorney, said the justices may have to determine what the framers of the state constitution intended when they insulated judges against certain pay cuts.
"I believe what they had in mind was a financial crisis, a situation where the commonwealth was threatened with bankruptcy or something very, very close to that," Heim said Tuesday.
The repeal law said the Legislature did not intend "to diminish or infringe on, or otherwise interfere with, the independence of the judicial system," and said those who got the pay increases constituted "salaried officers of the commonwealth."
Russ Diamond, head of PACleanSweep, a group that helped organize a rally against the pay raise and is working to unseat incumbents, said he was encouraged by the court's decision to take the cases.
"We have the whole issue of them being biased in some way, because they'll be affected themselves. But I think the state Supreme Court is the proper place to hear this case and to hash out these issues once and for all," Diamond said.
The July 7 pay-raise law, passed in the dead of night without debate or public input, increased the salaries of more than 1,300 judges, lawmakers and senior executive branch officials. All judges -- from district court to the Supreme Court -- got pay raises of 11 percent to 15 percent, and state legislators increased their own pay by up to 54 percent.
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