Court Opinion

ID: 9735006
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:56:25.340825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:53.790013
License: Public Domain

*190Dissenting OPINION BY
Judge SMITH-RIBNER.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to reverse the well-reasoned decision of the Court of Common Pleas of Cumberland County. The trial court held that The Board of Governors of the Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University Association (Association) was a “committee” of Penn State University (Penn State), and as such the Board of Governors was an agency as that term is defined by the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act), Act of October 15, 1998, P.L. 729, No. 93, 65 Pa.C.S. §§ 701-716, and was subject to the open-meeting provisions of the Act. See Section 704, 65 Pa. C.S. § 704. The Association argues that the Board of Governors is a private nonprofit corporation and therefore that its meetings are not open to the public.
The Dickinson School of Law merged with Penn State under a merger agreement effective July 1, 2000, and at the time of the merger, and now, Pehn State was and it still is a state-aided university operating as part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s system of higher education. After the School of Law merged with Penn State, the question then became whether the law school’s merger with a state-aided university, under which the law school acquired specific responsibilities and powers, subjected the meetings of its Board of Governors to the Sunshine Act enacted to protect “the right of the public to be present at all meetings of agencies and to witness the deliberation, policy formulation and decisionmaking of agencies” in performing their public roles. See Section 702(a), 65 Pa.C.S. § 702(a); Consumers Education & Protective Ass’n v. Nolan, 470 Pa. 372, 368 A.2d 675 (1977).
An “agency” is defined in Section 703, 65 Pa.C.S. § 703:
The body, and all committees thereof authorized by the body to take official action or render advice on matters of agency business, of all the following: ... any board, council, authority or commission of the Commonwealth or of any political subdivision of the Commonwealth or any State, municipal, township or school authority, school board, school governing body, commission, the boards of trustees of all State-aided colleges and universities, the councils of trustees of all State-owned colleges and universities, the boards of trustees of all State-related universities and all community colleges or similar organizations created by or pursuant to a statute which declares in substance that the organization performs or has for its purpose the performance of an essential governmental function and through the joint action of its members exercises governmental authority and takes official action.
Section 703 defines a “meeting” as “[a]ny prearranged gathering of an agency which is attended or participated in by a quorum of the members of an agency held for the purpose of deliberating agency business or taking official action.” That section further defines “official action” as “(1) [rjecommendations made by an agency pursuant to statute, ordinance or executive order[,] (2) [t]he establishment of policy by an agency!,] (3) [t]he decisions on agency business made by an agency!,] (4) [t]he vote taken by any agency on any motion, proposal, resolution, rule, regulation, ordinance, report or order.” There is no dispute that Penn State receives significant state funding and is legislatively recognized as a state-related university in the Commonwealth, that its Board of Trustees represents the “body” which is authorized to take official action or to render advice on matters of agency business and that its meetings held to deliberate upon university business or to take official action are *191subject to the Sunshine Act. In its amicus curiae brief Penn State acknowledged that its Board of Trustees is an agency for purposes of Section 703 of the Sunshine Act because it is a state-related university.
The merger agreement provided the Board of Governors with specific responsibilities and authority pursuant to Sections 4.13 and 4.06, and they include inter alia: review and making recommendations to Penn State regarding the mission of the School of Law; and render advice in connection the strategic and long-term capital plans, annual giving and capital campaigns, endowments, nature and scope of curriculum, class size, tuition and admissions criteria, operating and capital budgets, selecting a successor Dean and conferring honorary degrees. The merger agreement requires Penn State to abide, into perpetuity, by certain of its covenants unless otherwise agreed to by the Board of Governors. The covenants are stated in Section 4.06 and in particular relate, inter alia, to the name and location of the School of Law, engagement in J.D. based legal education and conferring of honorary degrees. Penn State is specifically bound as follows:
Name, Location and Degrees. The name of the unit of Penn State which offers Penn State’s J.D. or LL.M programs, joint degree programs with a J.D. or LL.M components shall be ‘The Dickinson School of Law of The Pennsylvania State University,’ and its primary location and campus shall be Car-lisle, Pennsylvania. Effective as of the Affiliation Date and thereafter into perpetuity, degrees conferred shall be conferred under such name and diplomas evidencing such degrees shall so state.
Id., at 4.06(B). Under this covenant, Penn State may change the name and location of the School of Law only upon majority vote of the Board of Governors.
The trial court reviewed thoroughly the merger agreement and the express powers that it conferred upon the Board of Governors and then determined that it was a committee of Penn State under the common definition of the word. Hence, because the Sunshine Act applied to the Board of Trustees’ meetings it likewise applied to the Board of Governors’ meetings. The court adopted Black’s Law Dictionary 266 (7th ed.1999) and Webster’s II New College Dictionary (1995) definitions of committee,1 noting the most significant language in the Sunshine Act referring to committees as being “authorized by the body to take official action or render advice” regarding the body’s business. Although the court found no case or statutory law specifically addressing the issue, I am persuaded by the reasoning articulated in the cases cited hereafter.
In Patriot-News Company v. Empowerment Team of Harrisburg School District Members, 763 A.2d 539 (Pa.Cmwlth.2000), this Court affirmed the trial court’s grant of a preliminary injunction directing that all future meetings of the appellant empowerment teams, established by two local agency school districts (Harrisburg and Steelton-Highspire) to create school improvement plans, be open to the public pursuant to the Sunshine Act. The Court determined that the empowerment teams were properly classified as adhocracies or “temporary committees” of the school districts and thus that they were considered to be agencies whose meetings were subject to the Sunshine Act. In this regard, the Court concluded that the empower*192ment teams were authorized to take official action related, inter alia, to identifying academic standards, revising curriculum and creating policies/procedures for assuring safe school environments. It observed that: “[i]n other words, it is Appellants who create policy and make recommendations pursuant to Act 16 [Education Empowerment Act], and the school board is, essentially, powerless to alter these recommendations in any way.” Id., at 545. Also significant was the fact that no course of action could be taken as to school improvement unless the empowerment teams decided first to recommend particular courses of action or policy. The Court deemed the empowerment teams in essence to be de facto school boards.
In Hacker v. Colonial League, 56 Pa. D. & C.4th 281 (2001), the chancellor granted a special injunction temporarily enjoining the league (unincorporated association of 12 Pennsylvania interscholastic athletic association schools) from enforcing certain rules and regulations after the chancellor found that the plaintiffs were likely to prove at a final injunction hearing that the league prescribed, adopted and sought enforcement of •rules and regulations concerning activities that cheerleaders may perform at athletic contests. Numerous high school students and their parents filed suit alleging that the league violated the Sunshine Act when it adopted the new cheerleading regulations at a closed meeting in May 2001. The legislature authorized school boards to promulgate rules and regulations governing athletic contests, and the chancellor concluded that because the school boards empowered the league to adopt those rules and regulations it acted as an arm of the boards or as a de facto school board, see Patriot-News Co., and therefore fell within the definition of agency subject to the Sunshine Act.
The foregoing cases illustrate some of the factors considered by the trial court when it reached the conclusion that the Board of Governors was a committee of Penn State and hence fell within the definition of agency under Section 703 of the Sunshine Act.2 There is no dispute that under the merger agreement the Board of Governors had express authority to provide advice to Penn State and to make binding recommendations concerning law school curriculum and that the Board could preclude Penn State, into perpetuity, from changing the name and location- of the School of Law. While not all of the Board of Governors’ meetings would be open to public scrutiny, there is no question that meetings at which the Board takes official action or renders advice on agency business should be open to the public subject to any limitations imposed under the Sunshine Act. When performing those functions, the Board is acting as an agency as that term is defined by Section 703 of the Sunshine Act. See Patriot New Co.; Hacker.
After reviewing the authority and powers granted to the Board of Governors under the merger agreement in conjunction with applicable definitions and the *193express requirements of the open-meeting provisions of the Sunshine Act, I am convinced that meetings of the Board of Governors are subject to the open-meeting provisions of the Sunshine Act and that the trial court was correct in so holding.3 Because the trial court correctly determined the issue in this case, I agree that it properly entered the preliminary injunction and that all of the attendant standards have been satisfied.
President Judge COLINS joins in this dissenting opinion.

. I agree with the trial court that the right to sue to enforce any covenants that survive the merger is of no consequence when determining whether the Sunshine Act applies to the Board of Governors’ meetings. I note that the right of an employee to sue its employer does not in any way diminish the employee's status as such; that the right of a servant to sue its master does not make the servant any less of a servant; that the right of shareholders to file suits against corporations does not change the plaintiffs' rights or status as shareholders; and so forth. The notion that the Board of Governors might someday become engaged in an adversarial relationship with Penn State simply fails to support the Board's contention that it is separate and independent from Penn State and cannot be classified as a committee of Penn State or otherwise excluded from coverage under the Sunshine Act.

. I also disagree with the majority’s unsupported contention that because Penn State had no ability to select the committee members, the Board of Governors cannot be deemed a committee of Penn State. To the contrary, Penn State agreed to merge with the School of Law because Penn State perceived it to be in furtherance of its long-range strategies. Penn State could have merged with a different law school or created one of its own. To that end, Penn State’s voluntary act of merging with the School of Law represents Penn State’s conscious selection of a "group of people” or an "entity,” which Penn State authorized to act on its behalf.