Court Opinion

ID: 9881614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-03 15:28:23.487383+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:13:27.883548
License: Public Domain

[J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.]
                     IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA
                                 EASTERN DISTRICT

    JASMINE WEEKS, ARNELL HOWARD,                   :   No. 22 EAP 2021
    PATRICIA SHALLICK, INDIVIDUALLY AND             :
    ON BEHALF OF ALL OTHERS SIMILARLY               :   Appeal from the order of the
    SITUATED,                                       :   Commonwealth Court dated May 13,
                                                    :   2021 at No. 409 MD 2019.
                       Appellants                   :
                                                    :   ARGUED: September 14, 2022
                                                    :
                v.                                  :
                                                    :
                                                    :
    DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES OF                 :
    THE COMMONWEALTH OF                             :
    PENNSYLVANIA,                                   :
                                                    :
                       Appellee                     :

                                    DISSENTING OPINION

JUSTICE WECHT                                               DECIDED: September 28, 2023

        The 1874 Constitution “was drafted in an atmosphere of extreme distrust of the

legislative body and of fear of the growing power of corporations and reflected a prevailing

mood of reform.”1 The political behavior engendering this distrust “took the form of special

laws legislation, logrolling, and arbitrary favoritism” in service of private interests. 2

1      William Penn Sch. Dist. v. Pa. Dep’t. of Educ., 170 A.3d 414, 423 n.13 (Pa. 2017)
(internal quotation marks and related citations omitted); see Pennsylvanians Against
Gambling Expansion Fund, Inc. v. Commonwealth, 877 A.2d 383, 394 (Pa. 2005)
(“PAGE”); see generally Maj. Op. at 19-22.
2       PAGE, 877 A.2d at 394 (footnote omitted). Logrolling “is the practice of ‘embracing
in one bill several distinct matters, none of which could singly obtain the assent of the
legislature, and procuring its passage by combining the minorities who favored the
(continued…)
       [The prevailing] lack of protection for the transparency of the legislative
       process enabled various legal provisions . . . to be surreptitiously inserted
       into a lengthy bill, often just before the final vote on it without all members
       of the General Assembly being aware of those provisions when voting on it.
       The General Assembly’s failure to adhere to standards of regularity in the
       legislative process resulted in the degradation of the integrity of legislative
       enactments to such a degree that newspapers of the day observed that “it
       occasionally occurs that . . . proposed legislation is . . . wholly perverted
       from its true intention, and the perversion is not discovered until the bill has
       become a law by the signature of the Governor, hastily secured by some
       convenient friends.” 3

       The post-bellum period was especially tumultuous in Pennsylvania, as the people

experimented with how best to confer and restrain the power of the instruments of the

Commonwealth’s government, revisiting and substantially revising the Commonwealth’s

charter in 1863 and again in 1874.        “[T]he public clamor to end” the underhanded

legislative practices led Pennsylvanians to vote overwhelmingly to convene a

constitutional convention in 1873, where they acted aggressively to curb legislative

excess by imposing a suite of mandatory legislative procedures to ensure the orderly,

transparent consideration and enactment of legislation, with the result embodied in the

Pennsylvania Constitution of 1874. 4       Because this Court’s case law continues to

undermine that constitutional mandate, and because I would hold that Act 12 was enacted

in violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution, I respectfully dissent.

individual matters to form a majority that would adopt them all.’” Id. at 394 n.7 (quoting
Charles W. Rubendall II, The Constitution and the Consolidated Statutes, 80 DICK. L. REV.
118, 120 (1975)).
3     Washington v. Dep’t. of Pub. Welfare of the Commonwealth, 188 A.3d 1135, 1145-
46 (Pa. 2018) (citation omitted).
4      Id. at 1146.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 2
       Among the procedures and restrictions that our Pennsylvania forebears imposed

are the constitutional provisions at issue in this case, which are materially unchanged

from the form they took in 1874. Article III, Section 1, from which we derive the “original-

purpose” requirement, provides that “[n]o law shall be passed except by bill, and no bill

shall be so altered or amended, on its passage through either house, as to change its

original purpose.” In relevant part, Article III, Section 3, which furnishes the “single-

subject” requirement, provides that “[n]o bill shall be passed containing more than one

subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title.”

       A lineage of case law spanning nearly 150 years since the people imposed these

restrictions 5 reflects this Court’s evolving effort to balance our competing concerns for the

legislature’s adherence to constitutional requirements with concerns that courts’ overly-

vigorous application of Article III’s requirements will infringe prerogatives essential to the

deal-making and compromise that attend the legislative process. 6 As the Majority and

prior decisions acknowledge, our cases have struck that balance inconsistently. 7

5       See, e.g., Wheeler v. City of Phila., 77 Pa. 338 (1875) (regarding a bill approved
on May 23, 1874, rejecting a single-subject challenge for want of sufficient pleading and
rejecting a clear-title challenge summarily).
6      See Maj. Op. at 23-24 (“[D]ue to the nature of the legislative process, of which the
offering of amendments by legislators or the insertion or deletion of various provisions is
a wholly accepted part of the path through each house of the General Assembly, our
Court has strived over the years to strike the appropriate balance between allegiance to
the intent and purpose of Article III, Section 3, and, at the same time, to give a broad
enough meaning to the provision to allow the legislative process to operate reasonably
unimpeded.”).
7      See, e.g., id. at 24 (Striking the appropriate balance “has proven to be complex
and does not lend itself to bright-line rules. These characteristics of a single subject
analysis, in turn, have resulted in a waxing and waning in how narrowly Section 3 has
been construed.”); Pa. State Ass’n of Jury Comm’rs v. Commonwealth, 64 A.3d 611, 616
(continued…)

                              [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 3
      Acknowledging that inconsistency has become a commonplace for this Court in

recent decades, yet we have never explained or justified our ongoing struggle to apply

clearly stated constitutional provisions with anything resembling doctrinal stability. So

openly have our cases contradicted each other at times that language used pejoratively

in one case has been cited as a legal truism in others.         For example, in City of

Philadelphia, while reviewing the history of single-subject decisions, this Court observed

with some apprehension that, “[i]n more recent decisions . . . and despite the continued

strong public policy underlying the single-subject requirement, some Pennsylvania Courts

have become extremely deferential toward the General Assembly in Section [3]

challenges.” 8 This tendency, we added, “has resulted in a situation where germaneness[9]

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.”10 But just three years later, considering another

Article III challenge in PAGE, this Court uncritically cited with approval “the extremely

deferential standard by which we view constitutional challenges” 11 in precisely the same

context.

(Pa. 2013) (“[W]hat this Court has considered ‘germane’ and ‘not germane’ has fluctuated
throughout the years.”).
8     City of Phila. v. Commonwealth, 838 A.2d 566, 587 (Pa. 2003) (emphasis added).
9      As explained below, “germaneness” has over time become a catch-all test for
compliance with both of the constitutional provisions at issue in this case as well as for
Article III, Section 4, which requires that all laws be considered on three separate
occasions in each house of the General Assembly. See, e.g., Washington, 188 A.3d at
1151. It also has come in for its own criticism as being problematically malleable.
10    City of Phila., 838 A.2d at 587.
11    877 A.2d at 393.

                            [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 4
       The Majority observes that PAGE embodies this Court’s “broadest interpretation

of the single subject requirement.” 12 The Majority also observes that several post-PAGE

cases have “reinvigorated a narrower understanding of the single subject requirement,

rendering our decision in PAGE an outlier.” 13 In my view, these more recent cases

charted a critical course correction, and they invite this Court to follow a more predictable

approach to these challenges that vindicates the undisputed intentions of the ratifiers of

the 1874 Constitution. Alas, this is an invitation that we now have declined twice in this

case. 14

       On balance, our cases have made a hash of Article III’s requirements and

subverted the ratifiers’ animating intention. One source of our difficulty seems to be our

insistent superimposition of the uniformly described “germaneness” test upon

constitutional provisions that utilize distinct words, implicitly calling for separate rubrics

12     Maj. Op. at 26.
13     Id. at 27.
14     Our first decision in this case—our most recent substantial comment on the
original-purpose and single-subject requirements—reverted to an approach that is difficult
to reconcile with our more recent cases. And now, upon this case’s return, the Majority
regrettably amplifies this Court’s suspect analysis in that decision. See Weeks v. Dep’t.
of Hum. Servs., 222 A.3d 722 (Pa. 2019) (“Weeks I”).
       Dissenting in Weeks I, focusing upon my concern that the Majority had exceeded
the narrow inquiry we undertake in reviewing an order granting or denying a preliminary
injunction in ongoing litigation, I observed that “the Majority not only [found] no substantial
question with regard to the single-subject challenge, the only question we are called upon
to consider, but it effectively decide[d] that question on the merits in favor of DHS, the
consummation of its decision a mere formality on remand.” Id. at 742 (Wecht, J.,
dissenting) (emphasis in original). Unsurprisingly, the Commonwealth Court later agreed.
Weeks v. Dept. of Human Servs., 255 A.3d 660, 666 (Pa. 2021) (“The Supreme Court’s
decision in [Weeks I] . . . was not a decision on the merits of [Weeks’] request for a
permanent injunction. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s analysis is compelling and
must be considered in reviewing [DHS’s] demurrer.”).

                              [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 5
rooted in the plain text and without the baggage of the vague standards we have tied to

the all-purpose “germaneness” test. Applying the Constitution’s text according to its

terms, Act 12 clearly was enacted in violation of the original-purpose and single-subject

rules—for distinct reasons rooted in their differently worded mandates.

       The following discussion begins, as it must, with the constitutional text. Then, I

review in some detail our legacy of case law interpreting the original-purpose and single-

subject rules. From there, I discuss what I believe to be the source of the confusion that

plagues our case law in this area. Finally, I explain why my interpretation of what

Section 1 and Section 3 require compels me to disagree with the Majority’s approval of

Act 12 in this case.

                                  The Constitutional Text

       I begin with the text of Article III, Sections 1 and 3:

                                   § 1. Passage of laws

             No law shall be passed except by bill, and no bill shall be so altered
       or amended, on its passage through either House, as to change its original
       purpose.

                                      § 3. Form of bills

              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.

       “When interpreting constitutional language, we are mindful that the language of the

Constitution controls and that it must be interpreted in its popular sense, as understood

by the people when they voted on its adoption.” 15 “[I]f the constitutional language is clear

15    McLinko v. Dep’t. of State, 279 A.3d 539, 577 (Pa. 2022); see In re Bruno, 101
A.3d 635, 659 (Pa. 2014) (“[T]he polestar of constitutional analysis undertaken by the
Court must be the plain language of the constitutional provisions at issue.”).

                              [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 6
and explicit, we will not delimit the meaning of the words used by reference to a supposed

intent.” 16 And “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.” 17

       “[T]here is a strong presumption in the law that legislative enactments do not

violate our Constitution,” which applies to enactment procedure, and “a statute will not be

declared unconstitutional unless it clearly, palpably, and plainly violates the

Constitution.”18 But “constitutional promises must be kept,” and “the separation of powers

in our tripartite system of government typically depends on judicial review to check acts

or omissions by the other branches in derogation of constitutional requirements.” 19

Ultimately, “the judicial branch cannot ignore a clear violation because of a false sense of

deference to the prerogatives of a sister branch of government.”20 And the Constitutional

text “must not be weakened by nice refinements or distinctions, or wrested from their plain

and natural import.”21

16     Robinson Twp. v. Washington Cnty. v. Commonwealth, 83 A.3d 901, 945 (Pa.
2013) (plurality) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Stilp v. Commonwealth, 905 A.2d
918, 939 (Pa. 2006) (“Our . . . touchstone is the actual language of the
Constitution . . . .”).
17     Robinson Twp., 83 A.3d at 945 (internal quotation marks omitted).
18     PAGE, 877 A.2d at 393 (emphasis omitted).
19     Wm. Penn Sch. Dist., 170 A.3d at 418.
20    Consumer Party of Pa. v. Commonwealth, 507 A.2d 323, 334 (Pa. 1986),
abrogated in part by PAGE.
21     Commonwealth v. Stofchek, 185 A. 840, 843 n.2 (Pa. 1936).

                               [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 7
                             The Original-Purpose Problem

       Interpreting Article III, Section 1’s original-purpose requirement, then, requires

consideration of what the ratifiers would have understood the “original purpose” of a bill

to be. The definition of purpose has been stable over many centuries. 22 In its “simple

sense,” the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the word means “[t]hat which one sets

before oneself as a thing to be done or attained, the object which one has in view.”23

       Our case law has never openly questioned that the original purpose of a bill is the

purpose an ordinary reader would glean from the bill in its originally-presented form. 24 In

that regard, we long have recognized as a critical goal of Article III’s requirements the

assurance that the citizenry is informed as to the goings-on in the General Assembly, a

22    We may seek guidance regarding a word’s “common and approved usage” at the
relevant time in dictionaries. McLinko, 279 A.3d at 577.
23    Purpose, THE COMPLETE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (2d Ed. 1991) (hereinafter
“OED”).
24      See Washington, 188 A.3d at 1146 (noting that the original-purpose requirement
bars “the addition of proposed legislation on a subject matter unrelated to that of the bill
as originally introduced” (emphasis added)); cf. Weeks I, 222 A.3d at 743 (Wecht, J.,
dissenting) (“The least we can ask is that any reasonably broad subject we superimpose
upon a bill for purposes of original purpose analysis should be one that a reasonable
reader might glean from the original text without the benefit of hindsight informed by later
amendments.”). In PAGE, we underscored the importance of this approach to original-
purpose analysis, criticizing and abrogating this Court’s decision in Consumer Party,
which erroneously conflated the original-purpose and single-subject inquiries by
analyzing the original-purpose challenge by reference to “the title of the legislation and its
content in final form.” PAGE, 877 A.2d at 408; see Marcavage v. Rendell, 936 A.2d 188,
193 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2007) (referring to the original purpose of the bill challenged, “viewed
in reasonably broad terms” according to its original form, as one criminalizing crop
destruction, and comparing it to the final version, which “regulate[d] vastly different
activities,” adding provisions expanding the class of persons protected by the offense of
ethnic intimidation). Marcavage is a Commonwealth Court decision, but we adopted that
court’s opinion as our own. See Marcavage v. Rendell, 951 A.2d 345 (Pa. 2008)(per
curiam).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 8
necessary factor in ensuring political accountability and in providing Commonwealth

citizens with “a vital assurance . . . that they will be able to make their views and wishes

regarding a particular piece of legislation known to their duly elected representatives

before its final passage.” 25

       The plain terms of Section 1 viewed in tandem with Neiman and cases cited therein

make clear that the ratifiers’ intention can be vindicated only if the bill enacted is

consistent with what the citizenry might reasonably have anticipated at the time of the

bill’s introduction. The question the constitutional text plainly asks is whether every

provision of the bill in its final form can be understood as advancing the original purpose

a citizen might reasonably have discerned on the face of the bill as introduced.

       But our case law has relegated this animating intent to the shadows. This Court’s

opinion in PAGE—which upheld what became the Gaming Act against various Article 3

challenges to the process by which it was proposed, amended, and enacted—exemplifies

the problems prevalent in our original-purpose and single-subject case law. But one

cannot review its discussion without first reviewing this Court’s single-subject decision in

City of Philadelphia, upon which PAGE primarily relied.

25      Commonwealth v. Neiman, 84 A.3d 603, 612 (Pa. 2013) (emphasis in original);
see id. (quoting PAGE, 877 A.2d at 395) (“[T]he single subject requirement proscribes the
inclusion of provisions into legislation without allowing for fair notice to the public and to
legislators of the existence of the same.”); Washington, 188 A.3d at 1146 (noting that the
single-subject requirement “safeguards the ability of all residents of the Commonwealth
who will be impacted by a bill to have the opportunity to make their views on its provisions
known to their elected representatives prior to their final vote on the measure”). We noted
the importance of public notice in connection with Section 3’s clear-title requirement a
mere decade after the ratification of the 1874 Constitution. See Fredericks v. Pa. Canal
Co., 2 A. 48, 49 (Pa. 1885) (rejecting a Section 3 challenge because, “as [the title] gives
such notice of the subject of the bill as reasonably to lead to an inquiry into the body
thereof, that is all that is required”).

                                [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 9
       In City of Philadelphia, the challenged law began as a five-page bill that the title

described as “Amending Title 53 (Municipalities Generally) of the Pennsylvania

Consolidated Statutes, further providing for governing body of municipal authorities.” 26

Its only substantive provision “was the inclusion of a citizenship requirement for the board

members of business improvement district authorities pursuant to the Municipal

Authorities Act.”27 In the months after its introduction, with only minor changes along the

way, the bill was read in each house of the General Assembly on three occasions as

prescribed by Article III, Section 4. 28 Only after those readings did a Senate committee

introduce the amendments that created the single-subject problem, and the bill thus

amended was resubmitted to the Senate for a final vote just two days before the end of

the legislative session.    These eleventh-hour, post-third reading changes radically

expanded the bill, which had grown to 127 pages with an astonishing multiplicity of new

provisions that (among other things) altered the Pennsylvania Convention Center

Authority’s board and governance, transferred authority over taxis and limousines in

Philadelphia from the Public Utility Commission to the Philadelphia Parking Authority,

expanded bonding requirements for developers, and prohibited police officers from

participating in political campaigns.

       Although City of Philadelphia did not involve an original-purpose challenge under

Section 1, it did express concern with—and push back against—what the Court then

26     838 A.2d at 571.
27     Id.
28      PA. CONST. art. III, § 4 (“Consideration of bills”), provides in relevant part: “Every
bill shall be considered on three different days in each House. . . .”

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 10
viewed as the increasing latitude Pennsylvania courts had been granting the General

Assembly in the course of applying the single-subject test.         In particular, the Court

expressed concern that courts were applying the “germaneness” test that Pennsylvania

courts long have applied, 29 sometimes confusingly, to all of the requirements set forth in

Article III, Sections 1, 3, and 4 of our Constitution.

       In PAGE, what became the Gaming Act originated in the House of Representatives

on February 3, 2004, as a one-page bill entitled “An Act Providing for the Duties of the

Pennsylvania State Police Regarding Criminal History Background Reports for Persons

Participating in Horse Racing,” and it “dealt exclusively with the Pennsylvania State Police

providing support to the State Harness and Horse Racing Commissions by performing

criminal history checks and the verification of fingerprints of applicants for licensure under

the Race Horse Industry Reform Act of 1981.” 30 The bill was considered in this limited

form three times by the House and twice by the Senate. But in the third and final Senate

consideration on July 1, 2004, the bill’s title was changed to include what the PAGE Court

described as “multiple” and “extensive” amendments—an almost euphemistic

description, because the one-page bill had ballooned to 146 pages. As amended, the bill

created an entirely new slots gaming industry and detailed an elaborate system of

29     “Germaneness” as a general concept appears in connection with Article III
requirements as early as 1878 and has remained ever since, over time becoming the
prevailing standard. See, e.g., Craig v. First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, 88 Pa.
42, 46 (Pa. 1878) (rejecting the argument that the subject of a supplemental bill was not
clearly expressed in the bill, and holding that the supplement was “germane to the subject
of the original bill” because “[t]hey all relate to cemeteries and the dead therefrom”); In re
Reber, 84 A. 587, 589 (Pa. 1912) (observing that “[p]rovisions for attaining various objects
which relate to the general subject of the bill” “are all germane to the main purpose of the
act”).
30     PAGE, 877 A.2d at 391.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 11
revenue generation and disbursement, administration, and oversight. A mere two days

after this “amended” bill first appeared in that form, it was submitted and voted upon by

the House on Saturday July 3 and passed by the Senate on Sunday (which also was

Independence Day). In two business days and a holiday weekend, a bill that had provided

narrowly for regulatory matters pertaining to the comparatively niche industry of horse-

racing, and as such of interest to only a handful of people, had been transformed abruptly

into one of the largest, most complex, economically consequential bills in the history of

the Commonwealth, one that broadly affected millions of Pennsylvanians and thousands

of Pennsylvania businesses in innumerable ways—all in blink-and-you-might-miss-it

fashion.

       Unsurprisingly, the Gaming Act was challenged vigorously, including for alleged

original-purpose and single-subject violations. The argument in support of an original-

purpose violation was compelling for obvious reasons. And it was betrayed no more

effectively than by the Commonwealth, itself, which posited the “regulation of gaming” as

the original purpose of a one-page bill laser-focused on specified police enforcement

functions associated with horse-racing.

       Reaffirming that the original-purpose test is inherently comparative, the Court

observed that Section 1 reflects a constitutional requirement in the bill introduction and

amendment process of “some degree of continuity in object or intention.”31 But in an

31     Id. at 408. This purported paraphrase arguably diminishes the explicit, textual
requirement of a bill’s unity of purpose at inception and the contributory role of all
provisions found in the final bill at enactment. Similarly, the Court’s qualified indication
that Section 1’s “verbiage certainly suggests a comparative analysis” is too ginger by half.
Hedged paraphrases like these bedevil our Article III case law in derogation of clear
constitutional commands.

                            [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 12
unexplained leap from this simple description, the Court prescribed a two-part test; the

first component of the test was the textually rooted comparative analysis, but the second

concerned whether the bill, in its final form, is deceptive in its title or contents. 32

       Turning to the first test, so described, the PAGE Court invoked the City of

Philadelphia Court’s observation, albeit in relation to a single-subject challenge, that a

reasonably broad assessment of the original purpose is necessary to ensure that the

legislature has space to make the sort of amendments that are a necessary aspect of a

process rooted in negotiation and compromise among legislators with diverse interests. 33

With little fanfare, the PAGE Court begged its own rejection of the original-purpose

challenge by accepting summarily the Commonwealth’s claim that the “primary objective

of the [original bill] was to regulate gaming.”34 This was an improbably broad account of

a narrow original bill pertaining on its face to horse-racing regulation. Especially in light

of its equally narrow original title, no reasonable reader would naturally characterize the

bill’s original purpose to encompass all gaming, especially gaming in a form that didn’t

legally exist in Pennsylvania when the bill was introduced. As well, it was a dubiously

modest characterization of the final bill, which may have regulated gaming in a sense, but

primarily did so relative to an entire industry that the bill, itself, created.

32    Justice Mundy correctly notes that this aspect of the PAGE test lacks constitutional
provenance. See Conc. Op. at 1-2 (Mundy, J.).
33    As I explain below, how a bill traveled to its enacted form is irrelevant to the single-
subject inquiry, which specifies only a necessary condition for a bill in its enacted form.
That condition is not informed by the various iterations of the bill during its journey.
34     PAGE, 877 A.2d at 409.

                              [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 13
       PAGE showed no consideration for the notice to that the public the original-

purpose requirement is designed to ensure, nor did it indicate how the citizenry might

have learned that a statute creating a multi-billion-dollar state-wide industry promising

sweeping effects for every community in the Commonwealth would pass the legislature

within two days of its introduction in that form, let alone how citizens might have organized

against the bill’s passage in that time frame, and amidst Independence Day festivities to

boot. Importantly, the Court in no way engaged the constitutionally prescribed question:

whether all of the provisions of the final bill were encompassed by a reasonably inferred

original purpose as determined solely by reference to the bill as introduced. 35

       Then came Stilp v. Commonwealth, 36 in which a one-page bill became a politically

and legally fraught behemoth very late in the legislative process. This Court nonetheless

rejected an original-purpose challenge. Entitled “An Act relating to compensation for

executive branch officials,” and providing as a short title the “Executive Branch Official

Compensation Act,”37 the original bill was introduced in the House on May 3, 2005, and

provided only that no executive official’s compensation could exceed the Governor’s. The

bill with only minor amendments was reviewed three times and received final passage in

35     The distinction between inferring an original purpose, inferring a final purpose, and
comparing them, versus inferring a reasonably broad original purpose and then reviewing
the final bill’s provisions for conformity with that purpose may be subtle, but it is
consequential. The test primarily appears in the former guise in our case law, including
in the Majority opinion in this case. See Maj. Op. at 36. But that formulation interposes
an additional layer of inference and extrapolation—i.e., inferring an overarching purpose
from the final bill as well as the original—which increases the risk of uncertainty twofold.
The Constitution does not ask whether the final purpose of the bill is consistent with the
original purpose. It asks whether the final bill’s provisions serve the bill’s original purpose.
36     905 A.2d 918 (Pa. 2006).
37     Id. at 953 (cleaned up).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 14
the House of Representatives on June 8, 2006. The Senate, too, reviewed the bill twice,

then made a minor amendment and passed it following a third reading, returning it to the

House on July 6, 2006.       But the House rejected the amendment, the Senate non-

concurred, and a conference committee was convened. The conference committee’s

amended bill appeared just one day later, on July 7. The amended bill comprised twenty-

two pages and proposed federally linked, formulaic salary increase structures to all

manner of officials in all three branches of government. 38 By the end of that same day, it

had been passed by both houses of the legislature and signed into law by the Governor.

In fewer than forty-eight hours, and with only one nominal review of the bill in its final form

before passage by each house, a bill that originally limited the compensation of certain

executive branch officials had become a law that overhauled the compensation scheme

throughout Pennsylvania government.

       The challengers argued that the original bill’s lone purpose was to ensure that the

Governor was the highest-paid executive official.        The respondents argued that the

original purpose viewed generally was “to provide compensation for government

officials.” 39 With little elaboration, the Court adopted the respondents’ account of the

original and final purpose and concluded that, in its final form, the bill related to this

purpose. Again, no regard was expressed for the limited period within which the people

might have learned that, far from enshrining the relatively uncontroversial proposition that

no executive official should be paid more than the Governor, the bill now increased the

compensation for a raft of public officials and tied future increases formulaically to federal

38     Id. at 954.
39     Id. at 957.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 15
employee compensation schedules, which some Pennsylvanians might have opposed for

any number of reasons. Once again, it would be farcical to suggest that time to express

opposition was afforded. By the time the average Pennsylvanian learned of the scope of

the bill submitted for final passage, it was already law.

       After PAGE’s and Stilp’s summary rejections of compelling original-purpose and

single-subject challenges, the tide turned to some degree. 40 But it did so in cases focused

upon the single-subject requirement, which is the topic of the next section of my

discussion. Relative to the original-purpose requirement, our next robust consideration

did not occur until the instant litigation came before us the first time, when we were called

upon to consider Weeks’ effort to secure a preliminary injunction staying Act 12’s

application until the Article III challenges were decided on the merits.

       In that decision, the Majority paid lip service to the proposition that it is not the role

of a court reviewing the grant or denial of a preliminary injunction to finally decide the

merits. But in the end the Majority did nothing less, unequivocally rejecting the Section 1

and Section 3 challenges. 41 “The original subject of the bill,” the Court explained, “was

limited to the Cash Assistance provision.”42

40     See Maj. Op. at 27.
41    See Weeks I, 222 A.3d at 730 (“[W]e find that the Commonwealth Court correctly
concluded that no [original-purpose] violation had occurred.”).
42      Id. More specifically, the bill in its original form proposed to eliminate Cash
Assistance, a program, providing a modest monthly stipend to (as of 2019) at least 12,000
qualified Pennsylvanians who were unable to work and had no other source of income.
As well, Pennsylvania has a Medical Assistance program that provides state-funded
health insurance to certain individuals—and at the time of Act 12’s passage under certain
circumstances one’s Cash Assistance status could affect Medical Assistance eligibility.
See generally Maj. Op. at 4-5; Diss. Op. at 3 (Donohue, J.).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 16
       The Court cautioned that, in reviewing an original-purpose challenge, “every effort

is made to uphold the law by hypothesizing a reasonably broad topic even for the original

version of the bill, while not crediting a topic so broad as to drain the germaneness test

of meaning.” 43 The Court observed that amendments to bills are par for the legislative

course and that the germaneness test “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 the process afforded by” Section 4. 44

The Court explained that “the same germaneness test as expressed in [Washington in

addressing a Section 4, three-reading challenge] is used in considering whether a change

of purpose under Section 1 occurred during the legislative process.”45

       The Weeks I Majority cited Stilp’s flawed prescription that a court reviewing an

original purpose challenge first must compare the original purpose of the bill, construed

in reasonably broad terms, to its final purpose to determine whether there has been an

alteration in that purpose. But then the Court further obfuscated the direct comparison of

the original purpose of the bill to the provisions of the bill it became by indicating “that a

potential unifying purpose is not judged solely according to the provision with which the

bill started, but by reference to a sufficiently broad . . . purpose within which all the

43     Weeks, 222 A.3d at 730. The Court’s formulation clearly ran afoul of my earlier
observation regarding the distinction between teasing out one original purpose and
measuring the final bill provision by provision for its role (or lack of a role) in advancing
that purpose versus surmising as a well a broad final purpose and using that as the basis
for comparison. It also reflected our persistent confusion regarding the distinct definitions
of “subject” and “purpose.”
44     Id. at 731 (quoting Washington, 188 A.3d at 1151).
45     Id.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 17
amendments in the final bill may also fit.”46 In effect, the Majority indicated that a

reviewing court would not merely posture itself as a hypothetical citizen determining a

reasonably broad purpose from the original bill viewed in isolation but instead would rig

the inquiry by reverse engineering conformity of purpose in light of the amendments that

followed. The Court then found (accurately) that the provisions of Act 12 in its original

form all related “in some way to Cash Assistance,” and (inaccurately) that those

provisions were later merely “supplemented by other sections falling within the rubric of

a single unifying topic.” 47

       The conflation here is plain: the original-purpose requirement doesn’t ask whether

there is some “single unifying topic” at the last—that’s the business of the single-subject

requirement. The original-purpose test is comparative: assess an original purpose for a

bill based solely upon its text, then measure the final enacted law to determine whether

its provisions all relate to and advance that original purpose. Still, even this conflation did

not adequately support the Majority’s analysis. The Majority itself characterized the

original bill as relating “in some way to Cash Assistance.” This clearly could not capture

all of the provisions that ended up in Act 12, which came primarily to address medical

service and funding-related matters that had no bearing whatsoever on Cash Assistance,

let alone its termination.

                                The Single-Subject Problem

       The single-subject requirement is equally clear in its meaning, even if it can be

challenging to apply. First, we should acknowledge that a bill’s “purpose,” the concern of

46     Id. (emphasis added).
47     Id.

                               [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 18
Section 1, should not be understood to be synonymous with “subject,” which is

Section 3’s focus. As Justice Mundy observes, “[a] bill’s purpose is its intention or

objective, i.e., the ‘end in view,’ . . . whereas the subject of a bill is the topic it deals with.” 48

Second, the assumption that the words carry distinct meanings arises from our obligation

to give discrete effect to all constitutional provisions rather than adopting an interpretation

that renders terms redundant. 49 An authoritative definition of “subject” is every bit as

familiar as that of the word “purpose.” In the first relevant definition of the word, we find

that the same dictionary cited above describes a subject as “[t]he substance of which a

thing consists or from which it is made.” 50 This meaning has been stable for centuries,

leaving little room to quibble over how the ratifiers understood it. 51

       The ill that the single-subject requirement was designed to cure, and the means

by which it was designed to do so, have never been described more aptly than in Payne

v. School District of Borough of Coudersport. 52 There, this Court drew upon the New

Jersey Constitution’s parallel provision, which by its terms aimed “to avoid improper

48   See Conc. Op. at 3 (Mundy, J.) (quoting Purpose, WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD
COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY (4th ed. 1999)).
49      See Robinson Twp., 83 A.3d at 946. This is yet another reason to question the
wisdom of using “germaneness” in analyzing the four distinct constitutional inquiries that
appear in Sections 1, 3, and 4, given the risk, long since realized, that four distinct
constitutional requirements will be hopelessly admixed when tested by one overriding
rubric.
50     Subject, OED.
51       To illustrate what I take to be the distinction, the subject of Act 12 as introduced
was Cash Assistance. Its purpose, though, was the elimination of Cash Assistance.
Thus, if a bill began as one that proposed to end Cash Assistance but it later was
amended to preserve and extend Cash Assistance, one might credibly argue that the final
bill violated the original-purpose requirement but satisfied the single-subject rule.
52     31 A. 1072 (Pa. 1895).

                                [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 19
influences, which may result from intermixing in one and the same act, such things as

have no proper relation.” 53 Elaborating in an oft-quoted passage, the Payne Court

observed:

      Few bills are so elementary in character that they may not be subdivided
      under several heads; and no two subjects are so wide apart that they may
      not be brought into common focus, if the point of view be carried back far
      enough. The quotation from the constitution of New Jersey furnishes the
      proper light in which to define the word ‘subject.’ Those things which have
      a ‘proper relation to each other,’ which fairly constitute parts of a scheme to
      accomplish a single general purpose, ‘relate to the same subject’ or ‘object.’
      And provisions which have no proper legislative relation to each other, and
      are not part of the same legislative scheme, may not be joined in the same
      act. 54

We could have stopped there with “proper relation” and “a scheme to accomplish a single

general purpose.” This would have left us better off than we are with the more nebulous

germaneness test.

      The principal concern was the aforementioned practice of logrolling, by which

legislators extract from each other or from the Governor support 55 for measures they

might otherwise oppose by lashing disfavored measures to those of greater popular

appeal or greater political consequence.      We long-ago quoted a participant in the

53    Id. at 1074.
54    Id.
55     The Majority aptly notes that logrolling may just as perniciously be used to force a
Governor to sign (or at least not veto) a bill as it may be used to cobble together a bare
majority for a suite of legislative provisions that would not command a majority
individually. Maj. Op. at 21 (The single subject limitation “guarantee[s] the same freedom
from ‘logrolling’ during executive review of legislative enactments.” (quoting ROBERT F.
WILLIAMS, THE LAW OF AMERICAN STATE CONSTITUTIONS, 261-62 (2009); citing in accord
Attorney Gen. v. Barnett, 48 A. 976 (Pa. 1901))).

                            [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 20
constitutional convention, who aptly explained why the single-subject rule was important

to those who ratified it:

       The objects had in view in the adoption of [the single-subject requirement]
       were to prevent ‘log-rolling’ and fraud, trickery, or surprise in legislation.
       Every measure is to stand upon its own merits without borrowing strength
       from another, and the members of each House, and still more the public,
       are to have notice by its very title of the contents or nature of a bill. 56

More recently, echoing Payne, this Court described the single-subject imperative as

follows: “our task is to ascertain whether the various components of the enactment are

part of ‘a unifying scheme to accomplish a single purpose.’” 57

       But then we unnecessarily blurred this standard with germaneness:

       [O]ur Court has interpreted Article III, Section 3 as mandating that . . . [“]the
       differing topics within the bill must be ‘germane’ to each other.” Jury
       Comm’rs, 64 A.3d at 616.

                                            ****

       In determining “germaneness,” our Court has acknowledged that some
       degree of deference to the General Assembly’s prerogative to amend
       legislation is required, due to the normal fluidity inherent in the legislative
       process, and, thus, we have deemed it is appropriate for a reviewing court
       to hypothesize a “reasonably broad topic” which would unify the various
       provisions of a final bill as enacted. City of Philadelphia, 838 A.2d at 588.
       However, our Court has also stressed the reasonable aspect of any
       proposed hypothetical unifying topic, in recognition of the fact that Article III,
       Section 3 would be rendered nugatory if such hypothetical topics were too
       expansive. 58

       As described above, in City of Philadelphia, the challenged bill began with a lone

substantive provision that required citizenship of board members of business

56     Stofchek, 185 A. at 843 n.2 (quoting the writings of Charles R. Buckalew, who was
an active participant in the 1873 constitutional convention).
57     Neiman, 84 A.3d at 612 (Pa. 2013) (quoting City of Phila., 838 A.2d at 589).
58     Id.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 21
improvement district authorities under the Municipal Authorities Act. 59 Only after each

house of the legislature completed its three prescribed readings did a Senate committee

introduce the amendments that were challenged as violative of Section 3. The bill thus

amended was resubmitted to the Senate for a final vote just two days before the end of

the legislative session. The now-127-page bill included the broad array of new provisions

detailed earlier.

       The Court acknowledged that “bills frequently are amended as they pass through

the Legislature . . . . [Section 3 is] often satisfied where the provisions added during the

legislative process assist in carrying out a bill’s main objective or are otherwise ‘germane’

to the bill’s subject as reflected in its title.” 60 The Court then noted that in earlier years,

the Court “applied the ‘germaneness’ test in a fairly strict manner.”61 For example, the

Court found that the regulation of land surveyors and professional engineers

encompassed two subjects because the two professions were not the same. 62 The Court

rejected another bill that contained three provisions pertaining to water canals, governing

59     Id.
60      Id. at 586-87. Even allowing that City of Philadelphia is the recent case that seems
most faithful to the Constitution’s proper function, the Court is not immune to creating
problems with its poorly chosen language. In this one short passage, with its use of the
word “otherwise,” the Court suggests that “germaneness” is an alternative to assisting in
carrying out a bill’s main objective, such that a bill can weather a single-subject challenge
for no better reason than that a given late encrustation on the bill “is germane to the bill’s
subject as reflected in its title.” I’m not entirely sure what this means, but I know that
recent legislative practice is not so much to describe a purpose in a bill’s title as it is to
index at length, but in vague, often neutral terms, the contents of the bill. The simple truth
is there can be no alternative to testing whether any given provision advances a proposed
unifying topic that is not overbroad.
61     Id. at 587.
62     See Woodruff v. Humphrey, 136 A. 213 (Pa. 1927).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 22
respectively maintenance, the sale of canal water, and the Commonwealth’s acquisition

and sale of portions of canals. 63

       But a countervailing trend had emerged more recently:

       [D]espite the continued strong public policy underlying the single-subject
       requirement, some Pennsylvania Courts have become extremely
       deferential toward the General Assembly in Section [3] challenges. . . .
       [T]hey have tended to apply the single subject standard to validate
       legislation containing many different topics so long as those topics can
       reasonably be viewed as falling under one broad subject. . . . [I]t 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. 64

       The Court cited numerous Commonwealth Court cases that exemplified the

mischief anticipated in Payne’s cautionary observation that “no two subjects are so wide

apart that they may not be brought into common focus, if the point of view be carried back

far enough.”65 “[Ex]ercising deference by hypothesizing reasonably broad topics . . . is

appropriate to some degree,”66 the City of Philadelphia Court observed, lest a reviewing

court “exercise a pedantic tyranny over the legislative process.” 67      But the City of

Philadelphia Court stressed that “[t]here must be limits . . . as otherwise virtually all

legislation, no matter how diverse in substance, would meet the single-subject

63     See Yardley Mills Co. v. Bogardus, 185 A. 218 (Pa. 1936).
64      City of Phila., 838 A.2d at 587. As noted earlier, this last characterization,
presented here as a cautionary note, is remarkably similar to our uncritical description in
later cases of the applicable standard. As I read this latter passage, “loose” apparently
is fine, provided the “loosely” defined subject also is not overbroad. The persistence of
porous terms like these is as maddening as their inevitably inconsistent application.
65     31 A. at 1074; see City of Phila., 838 A.2d at 587-588.
66     City of Phila., 838 A.2d at 588.
67     Id. (quoting In re PennDOT, 515 A.2d 899, 902 (Pa. 1986)).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 23
requirement.” 68 In that event, Section 3 “would be rendered impotent to guard against

the evils that it was designed to curtail.” 69 The Court then reviewed the disparate subjects

touched upon by the voluminous legislation there at issue and, rejecting the almost

comically expansive proposed unifying topic of “municipalities” as too broad in its scope,

invalidated the act as “an omnibus bill, whether or not it is called that in name.” 70

       PAGE, however, retreated from City of Philadelphia’s single-subject rigor, in deed

if not in word:

       In contrast to City of Philadelphia, in the matter sub judice, there is a single
       unifying subject—the regulation of gaming. The single topic of gaming does
       not encompass the limitless number of subjects which could be
       encompassed under the heading of “municipalities.” Specifically, [the
       Gaming Act] sets forth the legislative intent of regulating gaming, creates
       the Gaming Control Board, establishes policies and procedures for gaming
       licenses for the installation and operation of slot machines, enacts
       provisions to assist Pennsylvania’s horse racing industry through other
       gaming, and provides for administration and enforcement of the gaming law,
       including measures to insure the integrity of the operation of slot
       machines. 71

       In Spahn v. Zoning Board of Adjustment, 72 too, this Court took an extremely

deferential approach, rejecting a persuasive single-subject challenge. In that 2009 case,

a bill that originally increased penalties and forfeitures for violation of the Philadelphia

Code was amended at the last minute, among other things to limit the circumstances in

which Philadelphia citizens would have standing to challenge municipal actions. The

68     Id.
69     Id.
70     Id. at 589.
71     PAGE, 877 A.2d at 396.
72     977 A.2d 1132 (Pa. 2009).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 24
challengers argued that the late-night addition of the standing provision to a bill that had

not previously touched upon that topic violated the public transparency and political

accountability that the single-subject rule was intended to safeguard. The Spahn Court

acknowledged that “reasonable notice is the keystone” of Section 3, 73 but still found no

violation. Without commenting on the importance for citizens of learning the parameters

of their ability to hold their local government accountable through litigation, the Court

opined that the original bill and the amendments “involved changes directly related to the

grants of powers and limitations on Philadelphia Home Rule,” and that “the legislators

had reasonable notice that the amendments were germane to the grants of powers and

limitations on Philadelphia government.” 74

       But it hasn’t always been this way. In Jury Commissioners, for example, this Court

found a single-subject violation. The Court explained that the single-subject requirement

“serves the dual purposes of preventing the enactment of laws that otherwise would not

be passed [i.e., logrolling], and promoting the enhanced scrutiny of single topic bills.” 75

The Court then invoked the “germaneness” test, although the Court acknowledged that

“what this Court has considered ‘germane’ and ‘not germane’ has fluctuated throughout

the years.”76    Applying these principles, the Court found that the law in Jury

Commissioners violated the single-subject requirement. The challenged law implicated

the authority of county commissioners in two ways: first, it addressed commissioners’

73     Id. at 1148 (quoting PAGE, 877 A.2d at 395).
74     Id. at 1148 (Pa. 2009) (emphasis added).
75     64 A.2d at 616.
76     Id.

                            [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 25
authority to auction private property and surplus farm equipment online, which the Court

observed to be an executive function; second, it allowed commissioners to eliminate the

elected office of jury commissioner, thus affording the former a fundamentally legislative

power that was entirely distinct from the auction function except by relating both (as

proponents of the law’s validity argued) to the yawning subject of “the powers of county

commissioners.” The Court found this to be more like the rejected unifying subject of

“municipalities” in City of Philadelphia than it was like the supposedly narrower unifying

subjects we conjured in PAGE and Spahn.

       To similar effect were our decisions in Neiman and Leach v. Commonwealth. 77

The statute subject to challenge in Neiman in its final form amended the sex offender

registration law, deficiency judgment procedures, county park police jurisdiction, and the

statute of limitations for asbestos claims. This Court was unconvinced by both the

Commonwealth’s proposed unifying subject of “civil remedies” and the legislature’s

proposed subject of “judicial remedies and sanctions.” Finding no other “unifying scheme

to accomplish a single purpose,” 78 the Court determined that the law violated the single-

subject rule.

       In Leach, the challenged law, inter alia, added a new criminal offense for theft of

secondary metals; amended an existing trespass provision of the Crimes Code; and

provided standing for individuals and organizations to challenge local gun regulations.

This Court rejected the proposed unifying subject of “amending the Crimes Code” as

overbroad and the subject “regulation of firearms or the ability to own a firearm” as failing

77     141 A.3d 426 (Pa. 2016).
78     Neiman, 84 A.3d at 612 (quoting City of Phila., 838 A.2d at 589).

                            [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 26
to define a nexus or common purpose between civil remedies for local gun regulation and

the criminalization of theft of secondary metals. 79

       But then came Weeks I, and with it the return of extreme deference. There, the

Majority somewhat inverted the single-subject inquiry into an “un-relatedness” test:

       The gist of [City of Philadelphia, Jury Commissioners, Neiman, Leach,
       Spahn, and PAGE] is that a bill will be held to violate the single-subject rule
       only if it includes topics with “unrelated subject matter,” where “unrelated”
       connotes that any attempt to tie the provisions together within a single,
       unifying subject necessarily involves an overly-broad topic—such as the
       business of the courts, municipalities, or the economic wellbeing of the
       Commonwealth—which would empty the germaneness test of all
       meaning. 80

In the Weeks I Majority’s view, “[Act 12] as a whole relates to the provision of benefits

pertaining to the basic necessities of life to certain low-income individuals.” 81 The Majority

elaborated that some such benefits “may be in the form of cash assistance for such items

as basic utility services, food, clothing, and personal hygiene products, while others may

be supplied through medical or nursing-home care, the delivery of which is incentivized

by payments to providers.” 82     Notably, the Majority did not speak to the numerous

provisions that fell outside even these descriptions. These included provisions adjusting

the Medicaid designation of hospitals; changing hospital assessments in service of

ensuring a continuing flow of Federal Medicaid funds; and those authorizing distribution

of revenues collected under the Philadelphia Hospital Assessment. Importantly, Act 12

also provided that Hospital Assessment revenues could be used for a broad array of

79     Leach, 141 A.3d at 434.
80     Weeks I, 222 A.3d at 729.
81     Id.
82     Id.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 27
public health programs that serve the general population, not just the economically

disadvantaged, including programs and initiatives with no direct connection to “the basic

necessities of life” for low-income people as a class. Nor did the Majority consider that

low-income Pennsylvanians number in the millions while Cash Assistance recipients

number in the low five figures. Nonetheless, the Court found this proposed subject “both

unifying and sufficiently narrow to fit within the single-subject rubric as that concept has

been spelled out in the reported decisions of Pennsylvania appellate courts.”83

                                    Toward a Solution

       There are several clear problems with which this Court must reckon if it is to restore

a cogent account of each requirement that honors the ratifiers’ intent in adopting

Sections 1, 3, and 4 of Article III. In PAGE and Weeks I, and now in this case, the Court

has applied an original-purpose test that introduces elements of legislative deception into

the Section 1 inquiry. 84 And we have cited in that connection a subsidiary question

regarding the deceptiveness of the title as such, even though Section 1 does not mention

the title and Section 3 does, suggesting that the ratifiers had considered the relevance of

a statute’s title to Article III’s several requirements and did not deem that concern relevant

to the original-purpose analysis. 85 The first component of the PAGE test, and that factor

alone, adheres roughly to the plain language of Section 1, prescribing a simple

83     Id. at 730.
84     See Maj. Op. at 36 (quoting PAGE, 877 A.2d at 409).
85       I think the framers would agree that a statute’s title may fairly provide insight into
an enactment’s original purpose. But that is distinct from requiring an assessment of a
title’s deceptiveness about the contents of a bill in connection with the original-purpose
requirement.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 28
comparative analysis of the provisions of the final bill in order to determine whether they

advance a reasonably broad account of the purpose of the bill as originally introduced,

viewed through the eyes of a citizen with nothing but that original bill in hand. We should

stop there.

       Relatedly, the Court has not infrequently blessed consideration of a bill’s evolution

through amendment to inform its original purpose analysis and in connection with the

single-subject inquiry. 86 But a bill’s progress toward enactment has no bearing on what

notice the bill in its original form provided to citizens or legislators of what the legislature

was considering enacting, the sole concerns of Section 1. Furthermore, it says nothing

about the unity of subject of a bill at the time of its enactment or the descriptive sufficiency

of its title at that time, the concerns of Section 3. In short, both Section 1 and Section 3

call for the utilization of a snapshot of the bill to measure against the applicable standard.

For Section 1, the snapshot occurs at the time of the bill’s introduction. The provisions of

the final bill—another snapshot—are measured for their function, if any, in advancing the

bill’s original purpose. For Section 3, the snapshot occurs at enactment, and it is the only

consideration that matters, since one can only then assess the degree to which the

provisions of a bill have a nexus to a single subject that is not overly broad at that time.

       I also am concerned about the Court’s tendency to imply that the legislature’s

collective state of mind informs the constitutional permissibility of its gambol at the edge

of constitutional limitations. It is true that the Article III requirements in some sense

sprung from the ratifiers’ concern for intentional legislative deception, both among

86     See Maj. Op. at 28 (“[W]hen engaging in a germaneness analysis [under the
single-subject test], a court may hypothesize a reasonably broad purpose for a bill that
encompasses the original text and amendments thereto . . . .”).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 29
legislators and with respect to the public. But the requirement was not drafted so as to

inquire as to the legislature’s intent to deceive in a given case. Rather, it is a per se rule

predicated on the assumption that the absence of such a requirement inexorably will lead

to deception.

       Similarly, we have long agreed that Section 3’s single-subject requirement

reflected and effectuated a categorical rejection of omnibus bills and a strong desire to

end logrolling as a legislative tactic to force the passage of disfavored, unpopular, or

simply unanticipated laws. But here as well, Section 3 is a per se rule to prevent such

tactics regardless of how or why they are employed. 87

       The damage that our unpredictable approach to these issues incurs is not

hypothetical. We have ample evidence that the legislature now routinely subverts the

ratifiers’ intentions in obvious ways. In various cases, including this one and some

described above, the legislature makes radical additions to bills after the second or third

reading of a much simpler bill that in no way anticipated the dramatic additions to come.

Such changes happen at the tail end of legislative sessions, on holiday weekends, or

scant days before some important program is about to expire, one that only the rushed

bill can preserve. Often the populace has virtually no opportunity to rally and express

opposition to the final bill.

       These occurrences frustrate the ratifiers’ intent, and our reticence to interfere has

only encouraged the General Assembly to utilize these tactics by giving legislators good

87     With respect to Section 4’s reading requirement, the ratifiers’ intent comprised
concern for probity and deliberation, as well as for slowing down the process in
furtherance of civic awareness and engagement. Here, too, the textual requirement is
unequivocal and therefore does not invite consideration of the legislators’ intent in
bypassing or manipulating the three-reading requirement.

                                [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 30
reason to think their handiwork will pass judicial scrutiny. To correct this pattern, we

should stop compromising these important checks on legislative gamesmanship by “nice

refinements or distinctions wrested from [Article III’s] plain and natural import.”88 Most

importantly, we can and should measure our fidelity to those who ratified the 1874

Constitution by how frequently the General Assembly engages in precisely the conduct

that we have often acknowledged the ratifiers intended to prevent.         Unless we are

satisfied that prevailing legislative practices are in keeping with what we have recognized

as the ratifiers’ intent, we must concede that we are coming up short in our efforts to

ensure adherence to the Constitution’s requirements. And I find it difficult to imagine how

anyone might reconcile the persistent legislative pattern of transformative, eleventh-hour

amendments introducing unforeseeable stand-alone legislative schemes with the

transparent, orderly, and methodical legislative practice that the ratifiers envisioned.

Whatever rubric we cite, we bless legislation passed this way frequently enough that the

General Assembly has taken it as license to persist in the same practices.

       This case provides a perfect example of precisely the abuses detailed above, and

Act 12’s general incompatibility with Sections 1 and 3 makes that painfully clear. There

seems to be no dispute that eliminating Cash Assistance in a clean bill was a non-starter.

Governor Wolf had made clear his opposition to eliminating Cash Assistance. 89 So the

General Assembly waited until a critical and unrelated set of programs and drawdowns

were set to expire, inserted them into Act 12, and finally approved the bill less than three

business days before the relevant deadline to preserve hundreds of millions of dollars of

88     Stofchek, 185 A. at 843 n.2 (Pa. 1936).
89     See Diss. Op. at 12 (Donohue, J.).

                            [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 31
federal funds would expire. With so much on the line for so many Pennsylvania citizens

and institutions, the Governor, calling the dilemma that the legislature had foisted on him

a Hobson’s Choice, signed Act 12 into law two days later.

       The Majority sees it differently. The Majority explains:

       Viewed in reasonably broad terms, the original purpose of Act 12 was to
       eliminate Cash Assistance while favoring health-specific benefits for low-
       income individuals, as evidenced by the Human Services Code’s provisions
       which eliminated the Cash Assistance program and reaffirmed the
       continuance of the Medical Assistance program for low-income
       individuals. . . . While the amendments made to the original bill were
       extensive, . . . the central objective of the legislation remained to “eliminate
       Cash Assistance while favoring health-specific benefits for low-income
       individuals.” The purpose of both the original bill and the final bill is the
       same. 90

I certainly agree with the Majority to the extent that it identifies the original purpose of

Act 12 as the elimination of the Cash Assistance program. But I disagree that the

technical changes made to insulate the medical assistance program from becoming

damage collateral to the elimination of Cash Assistance would have been perceived by a

reasonable reader of the original bill as what the Majority calls the reaffirmation of “the

continuance of the Medical Assistance program.”91 The amendments associated with

medical assistance eligibility merely were necessary to insulate the medical assistance

program’s status quo from eliminating Cash Assistance for anyone whose eligibility for

medical assistance was made contingent on the receipt of cash assistance. 92 As best I

can tell, no one was added to or removed from the medical assistance program by

90     Maj. Op. at 37.
91     Id.
92     See Diss. Op. at 3 & n. 5 (Donohue, J.).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 32
operation of Act 12, and ensuring continued eligibility was the only reason the bill

contained any reference to medical assistance at all. These modest revisions to medical

assistance eligibility provisions only underscore for any reasonable reader that the lone

purpose of Act 12 as originally submitted was to eliminate Cash Assistance and nothing

more. In short, no reasonable reader would have looked at the original bill and believed

that the purpose of the bill, as revealed by the revisions it proposed to existing law, was

designed to accomplish anything more than eliminating Cash Assistance.

       Even though this observation alone is sufficient to establish an original-purpose

violation, the Majority’s analysis suggests the misapprehension regarding the governing

standard that I addressed earlier in this opinion. Having identified an original purpose

that is broad, but perhaps not reasonable in the shoes of a hypothetical lay observer, the

Majority then identifies a final purpose for the Act that unsurprisingly matches the original.

But that move subtly shifts the analysis away from the proper inquiry. The issue isn’t one

of purpose-matching, as it were. Rather, we must identify a reasonably broad purpose in

the original bill without reference to what it later became, then skip directly to the law as

enacted and ask whether every substantive provision of that law serves the original

purpose we have gleaned.          The Majority’s approach necessarily invites reverse

engineering in service of finding a unifying theme, however broad. But that is precisely

what we must not do, because it is entirely too easy, viewing both bills side by side, to

find some unifying purpose if we try hard enough—precisely the concern described in

Payne.    Here, with a proper understanding of the original modifications to medical

assistance as mere byproducts of the obvious purpose to end Cash Assistance, it is clear

none of the provisions added thereafter advanced that purpose in any material way. As

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 33
such, the final bill simply went places in service of various ends that a citizen could not

have anticipated based upon a review of the first bill, denying the citizen notice of what

actions the legislature proposed to take.

       Act 12 also fails the single-subject test. The Majority proposes as a unifying

subject that Act 12’s “provisions all relate to benefits pertaining to the basic necessities

of life to low-income individuals.”93 And it concludes summarily that even those Act 12

provisions that provided numerous ancillary benefits to the public at large nominally tied

to public health “still fall within [that] unifying single subject.” 94 Moreover, the Majority

assures us that, because of the unifying effect of this subject, Act 12 can’t be

“unconstitutional logrolling” 95—this despite its acknowledgment that Governors can be

logrolled and that Governor Wolf in this case effectively said that his signature was forced.

In any event, the fact of logrolling, like the fact of deceptive or wrongful intent, is immaterial

to a constitutional test that cites neither of those considerations. The only question

concerns legislative compliance with the prohibition upon bills that by any reasonable

assessment legislate as to more than one subject.

       Even if I agreed that, if you squint just right, you can view every item in Act 12 as

somehow involving “benefits pertaining to the basic necessities of life to low-income

individuals,” the question the Majority doesn’t ask is what else might pertain to the basic

necessities of life to low-income individuals? For that matter, what are necessities? The

Majority’s proposed unifying subject is no less broad than, say, the powers of county

93     Maj. Op. at 29.
94     Id. at 30.
95     Id.

                              [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 34
commissioners at issue in Jury Commissioners. Yes, county commissioners have broad

bailiwicks and manifold powers. But so, too, do low-income individuals have diverse and

numerous necessities of life, and on the Majority’s account just about anything that

confers a benefit on the public at large falls within that rubric by extension. 96 Act 12’s

breadth exceeds constitutional boundaries by analogy to City of Philadelphia, Jury

Commissioners, Neiman, and Leach. Second, for reasons detailed by Justice Donohue

in dissent, even that problematic subject fails to capture everything in Act 12. 97 And we

have made clear in cases like City of Philadelphia that Section 3 will not tolerate statutes

ostensibly linked by a single, broad hypothetical subject when that subject fails to describe

a nexus that encompasses every provision of the bill.

       This case presents an excellent opportunity to re-center the constitutional text in

Article III analysis, to reduce the fundamental inconsistency revealed by the sum of our

prior Article III decisions, and to substantially restore the deteriorated guardrails that the

ratifiers of the 1874 Constitution installed specifically to prevent legislative methods that

persist 150 years after the people sought to end them. Regrettably, the Majority opts to

let that opportunity pass.

       No doubt, such a course correction would complicate the legislative process,

narrowing the parameters within which the people’s representatives may negotiate and

compromise to make sound laws that are responsive to and in the interests of their

96     See Diss. Op. at 8 (Donohue, J.) (“Based on [the Majority’s] reasoning, virtually
any legislative act focused on benefitting the general public could fit into the subject of
‘the provision of benefits pertaining to the basic necessities of life for low-income
individuals’ so long as low-income individuals are involved in some capacity.”).
97     Id.

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 35
constituents. But if those difficulties are unfamiliar, it is only because for too long we have

granted the General Assembly greater latitude than the 1874 Constitution envisaged. The

Constitution must prevail over inconvenience. And the General Assembly well knows and

regularly demonstrates that the process for proposing amendments to the Pennsylvania

Constitution for the voters’ consideration is not terribly burdensome. 98 If our legislature

wants to enjoy the United States Congress’ ability to rely heavily on omnibus bills full of

dexterous logrolling, cajoling earmarks, and special laws to pass what won’t draw a

majority standing alone, all that it must do is fashion an amendment and persuade voters

that Article III has outlived its usefulness or doesn’t mean what it presently says. In the

meantime, this Court should continue to insist on faithful adherence to the Constitution’s

own teachings.

98     Among proposed constitutional amendments the General Assembly has put on the
ballot in recent years are amendments: imposing mandatory retirement on judges
(approved); abolishing Philadelphia Traffic Court (approved); authorizing local taxing
authorities to exempt the full value of homesteads from property taxes (approved);
constitutionalizing “Marsy’s Law,” which inter alia would have enshrined certain rights for
victims of crime (deemed unconstitutionally proposed for violating the law requiring a
separate vote on discrete constitutional amendments); expanding the existing state loan
program for volunteer fire departments to municipal fire departments and non-profit EMS
providers (approved); precluding race and ethnicity discrimination (approved); and two
amendments that collectively modified the Governor’s and General Assembly’s
respective roles regarding the termination and extension of emergency declarations
(approved).

                             [J-50-2022] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 36