Opinion ID: 2394663
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Count I: Ripeness

Text: The ordinance at issue here rezoned a parcel of land owned by PEDP, which was designated as a future site of a licensed gaming facility by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (the Board), from commercial use to residential use. If enforced, this designation would preclude the gaming facility development envisioned by PEDP and approved by the Board. The Majority's ripeness analysis relies on the City's claim that the prior commercial entertainment district (CED) designation supersedes all underlying zoning classifications, and the assertion by the City that it has never expressed an intention to apply this new R-10A designation to preclude development of [PEDP's] casino. Majority Op. at 390 (citing Briefs for Respondents). While correct in its conclusion, the Majority makes no effort to square its analysis with PGCB v. City Council . That the Majority deems ripeness determinative in this case, while the Court quickly dismissed a similar argument in PGCB v. City Council , is perplexing. See PGCB v. City Council, 928 A.2d at 1265; Id. at 1283-1284 (Castille, J., dissenting). The jurisprudential disconnect arising from two such divergent and near-contemporaneous decisions presents a quandary to those who seek to make sense of this body of law. The alleged harm in PGCB v. City Council was two steps removed from actuality, as opposed to a single promissory step in this case. In PGCB v. City Council , Philadelphia City Council passed an ordinance that would have allowed the electorate to participate in the legislative process by weighing in on a question concerning whether City Council should facilitate state-ordained slot machine gambling. The proposal would not have affected any gaming facility, or the statewide slot machine empire, unless (1) the electorate voted a certain way, and (2) City Council acted upon the measure thereby obstructing the implementation of the Board's statutory authority. This Court stretched the scope of substantial and immediate interest to find standing in the Gaming Board, an administrative agency, to suppress the electoral process and strike the ballot measure, reasoning that the mere passage of the ordinance providing for the ballot question was somehow an impermissible infringement upon the agency's rulemaking authority. See PGCB v. City Council, 928 A.2d at 1265-1266. Additionally, the majority held that the challenge to the ballot question in PGCB v. City Council was ripe for adjudication, before any vote had been cast. Id. In the present case, we are faced with a challenge levied, not by a bureaucratic entity, but by the actual party awarded the casino license. That party has just seen its approved property reverse spot-zoned (or so it says) to prevent it from building the casino it was licensed by the Board to build. The obstructionist ordinance thus actually exists here, where the alleged obstruction had not yet come into existence in PGCB v. City Council . Yet this case is deemed unripe, Majority Slip Op. at 11, where the prior one was ripe-and so ripe as to warrant unprecedented interference with the democratic process to boot. The Majority's discussion on facial versus as-applied challenges does not change the fact that, in the real world, it is difficult to see how the challenge here is unripe if the ripeness holding in PGCB v. City Council is still deemed valid. [1] I concur in the result on ripeness only because I view today's decision as an implicit disapproval of PGCB v. City Council . What is unfortunate is that, if this Court was destined to be wrong in one of these cases, the error involved suppression of the people's bedrock right to express their opinion through the ballot.