Court Opinion

ID: 9645329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:21:13.945521+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:25.793917
License: Public Domain

EAGEN, Justice
(dissenting).
It is a well-established general principle of this Court that we will not determine a constitutional issue unless and until this determination is absolutely necessary to a resolution of the controversy before us. See, e. g., Lattanzio v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, 461 Pa. 392, 336 A.2d 595 (1975); Binder v. Triangle Publications, Inc., 442 Pa. 319, 275 A.2d 53 (1971); Lynch v. Owen J. Roberts School District, 430 Pa. 461, 244 A.2d 1 (1968). In my view, we need not and should not decide the constitutionality of the recall provision of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter at this time. See *46and compare Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 346-47, 56 S.Ct. 466, 482-83, 80 L.Ed. 688 (1935) (concurringopinion,Brandéis, J.).
If, however, we must decide at this juncture whether or not Philadelphia’s recall scheme violates the Pennsylvania Constitution, I must conclude that it does not. As the opinion of the Chief Justice correctly observes, “the entire Home Rule Charter of Philadelphia has the force and status of an enactment of the legislature” and “[a]s such, it is presumed constitutional and the burden of proving a violation rests on those who allege unconstitutionality.” Opinion of the Chief Justice at 244. The opinion, however, concludes that the recall provision “clearly, palpably and plainly” violates Article VI, Section 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution because it is not predicated upon cause “amounting to criminality or misbehavior while in office.” Opinion of the Chief Justice at 244. I cannot agree.
In addition to the impeachment provisions contained in Article VI, Sections 4-6, the Pennsylvania Constitution in Article VI, Section 7 contains three additional and distinct provisions pertaining to the removal of civil officers:
“All civil officers shall hold their offices on the condition that they behave themselves well while in office, and shall be removed on conviction of misbehavior in office or of any infamous crime. Appointed civil officers, other than judges of the courts of record, may be removed at the pleasure of the power by which they shall have been appointed. All civil officers elected by the people, except the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, members of the General Assembly and judges of the courts of record, shall be removed by the Governor for reasonable cause, after due notice and full hearing, on the address of two-thirds of the Senate.”
As the Chief Justice recognizes, however, we have long held that the constitutional provisions pertaining to the *47removal of civil officers are exclusive with regard to constitutional officers only, and that the constitutional provision that “All officers, whose selection is not provided for in this Constitution, shall be elected or appointed as may be directed by law” (now contained in Article VI, Section 1) necessarily contains the implication that the terms of such non-constitutional, legislatively-created officers may be conditioned or terminated as provided by the legislature. Thus, in Milford Township Supervisors’ Removal, 291 Pa. 46, 51, 139 A. 623, 625 (1927), we held that a statute “providing for a forfeiture on a judicial determination of a breach of the constitutional ‘condition that [township supervisors] behave themselves well while in office’ ” was not violative of the Constitution.
I do not believe, however, that this holding enunciated a constitutional requirement that a legislatively-sanctioned procedure for the removal of a non-constitutional elected officer must necessarily be predicated upon cause, any more than it required that such a procedure be predicated upon a “judicial determination.” I am not so persuaded because of the fact that in the same paragraph in which the Court announced this holding, it specifically recognized that “where a term of office is subject to the control of the legislature, that tribunal may abolish the office, and thereby constitutionally oust the officer during the running of his term . . . .” Id. (Quoted in the opinion of the Chief Justice at 245.) Clearly such a constitutionally-permitted ouster of an elected civil officer would not require a finding of criminality or misbehavior in office.
The opinion of the Chief Justice nevertheless now concludes that the provisions of Article VI, Section 7 require that the removal of even a non-constitutional elected civil officer, as the Mayor of Philadelphia unquestionably is, be conditioned upon cause amounting to criminality or misbehavior in office and that, in contrast to the quasi-judicial procedure for removal of an elected incumbent *48contained in the Philadelphia Charter of 1919 which we upheld in Marshall Impeachment Case, 360 Pa. 304, 62 A.2d 30 (1948), the recall procedure contained in the present Home Rule Charter is unconstitutional. In my view, the language of the Constitution will not support such a construction. I believe that the language contained in Article VI, Section 7 and emphasized by the Chief Justice as establishing the requirement of cause must be interpreted in the context in which it appears. Thus, the statement that “All civil officers shall hold their offices on the condition that they behave themselves well while in office” must be read in conjunction with the requirement that they “shall be removed on com viction of misbehavior in office or of any infamous crime,” and it must be limited to that context. If this provision really means that all officers are entitled to retain their offices for the length of their terms as long as they behave well, the following provision that “Appointed civil officers . . . may be removed at the pleasure of the power by which they shall have been appointed” is blatantly contradictory. The third provision, that dealing only with elected civil officers, does require “reasonable cause” before an officer can be removed by the Governor on the address of two-thirds of the Senate, but I am not persuaded that the alternative removal procedures permitted with regard to non-constitutional elected officers must inevitably be conditioned on “reasonable cause” any more than they must inevitably be conditioned upon a two-thirds vote of a deliberative body.
My greatest obstacle to accepting the Chief Justice’s analysis is that it fails to address itself to the distinct and particular nature of the recall process. Clearly in our system of representative democracy an officer duly chosen by the people should not be removed from office by his fellow representatives of the people — be they executive, legislative, or judicial — without reasonable cause; otherwise the right of the people with regard to the se*49lection of these officers would be undermined. But the concept of recall contemplates that the term of an officer democratically elected by the people is conditioned upon the officer’s remaining subject to a democratic referendum wherein he may be removed by the people. Thus, the removal provision in the Constitution most clearly analogous to the recall of a non-constitutional elected officer is the one in Article VI, Section 7 which provides that “Appointed civil officers . . . may be removed at the pleasure of the power by which they shall have been appointed.” I therefore see no constitutional bar to the people as a whole removing at their pleasure a non-constitutional officer the people themselves have appointed (elected).
Because of my interpretation of the Pennsylvania Constitution, I find the analysis of recall in Gordon v. Leatherman, 450 F.2d 562 (5th Cir. 1971.) pertinent to the present case, even though that case was decided on the basis of the Federal Constitution. A commissioner of Dade County, Florida, there sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the carrying out of a recall election pursuant to procedures contained in the Dade County Home Rule Charter and expressly permitted by the Florida Constitution. He contended that the absence in the recall provision of a requirement of cause deprived him of his office, a valuable property right, without due process, and the District Court agreed with him. A panel of the Fifth Circuit unanimously reversed, stating in pertinent part:
“Where a home rule charter provision requires a statement of charges in a recall petition, such procedure is not necessitated by any notion of a due process command for notice, but is required by the very nature of a political system which permits removal only for cause. In Dade County, however, the charter provides a structure whereby commissioners serve at the will of *50the electorate, and as such, no statement need be made of reasons for recall.
“Furthermore, there is a fundamental difference between the expulsion or removal of a public official by the state and that same activity by the voters. Any governmental body is required to act fairly, but that is not true as to a voter. Insofar as the United States Constitution is concerned, an elector may vote for a good reason, a bad reason, or for no reason whatsoever.” [Footnote omitted.]
Gordon v. Leatherman, supra at 566-67. Petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc were denied in Gordon. For the reasons stated above, I believe the same considerations are here applicable with respect to the Pennsylvania Constitution.
Nor is the opinion of the late Mr. Justice Musmanno in Foltz Appeal, 370 Pa. 567, 88 A.2d 871 (1952), quoted in the opinion of the Chief Justice, authority to the contrary. First, it should be noted that the issue in Foltz was whether a complaint seeking the removal of township officers, pursuant to a statute providing for judicial removal at the behest of 5% of the township’s registered electors if the officer in question refused or neglected to perform his duties, stated the necessary cause. Thus, not only did Foltz not involve a procedure providing for recall after a democratic vote of the electorate, but it was decided on a non-constitutional ground. Hence, the language quoted in the opinion of the Chief Justice to the extent it suggests recall is unconstitutional, is clearly only dictum. Second, and more significantly, the analysis of Mr. Justice Musmanno in that opinion is clearly based upon the right of the people to retain the services of officers they themselves have elected, and the need to protect the people from the arbitrary removal of their chosen officers. The language of the opinion provides no basis for holding that the people need to be protected from themselves.
*51It is not our province here to determine the legislative wisdom of subjecting elected non-constitutional officers to recall elections at the petition of a minority of the electorate. In my view, however, there is no constitutional impediment to such a scheme, and a procedure whereby such an officer may be removed by a majority vote of the very people who have elected him does not “clearly, palpably and plainly” violate the Pennsylvania Constitution.
Although I find no constitutional infirmity in the recall provision of Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter, I would not decide the validity of the recall petition on the existing record, because up to this point neither side to the litigation has been given an opportunity in an adequate hearing to be heard or to properly litigate the validity of the recall petition. And, needless to say, the opportunity to be heard is fundamental to our system of jurisprudence.
In this connection, it should first be noted that neither the Citizens Committee to Recall [Committee] nor Mayor Rizzo, to whom the recall proceedings were directed, was given the opportunity to present evidence before the Board of Elections [Board]. Then, when the issue of the validity of the petition came before the Court of Common Pleas in an action instituted on behalf of the Committee and in which Mayor Rizzo was permitted to intervene, neither Mayor Rizzo nor the Committee was permitted to introduce any evidence other than that which the Board had considered. In fact, when Mayor Rizzo asked for permission to call as witnesses before the court twenty-five individuals who circulated the sheets of the recall petition and to show through the testimony of these witnesses that the affidavits attached to a large number of sheets1 were false in a substantive manner, the court denied the request. This ruling, in my view, was error, and clearly it was foreign to the fundamental *52principle that parties to a litigation should be given the opportunity to be heard. Mayor Rizzo should have been given the opportunity to prove what his offer indicated. Likewise, the Committee should have been given the opportunity to refute the evidence offered by Mayor Rizzo and the chance to present all relevant evidence it deemed necessary to aid the court in resolving the validity of the petition.
The ruling of the court denying the parties the opportunity to be heard, as related above, was premised on the court’s conclusion that the issue of the validity of the petition was properly before the court in an action in mandamus, and that, since the mandamus action followed a hearing before the Board, an administrative agency, the court’s review was limited to the administrative record.2 Under all the circumstances, I disagree.
First, I am not convinced mandamus was proper under the circumstances. If an adequate remedy existed at law, unquestionably mandamus should not have been entertained. And, in my view, an adequate remedy at law was provided under the Local Agency Law. The opinion of the Chief Justice states the Local Agency Law was inapplicable because the Board’s decision as to the validity of the recall petition was not an “adjudication” as that term is defined under the Act.3 .
*53The opinion gives two reasons to justify the above statement. First, the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, 351 Pa.Code 9.9-100 et seq., does not provide for participation of the Committee in any proceeding before the Board. Second, since Section 2(3) of the Local Agency Law, 53 P.S. § 11302(3), defines “party” as any person who appears in a proceeding before a local agency, and since the Committee did not appear before the Board in a proceeding, it does not constitute a party.
While the Committee and Mayor Rizzo did not appear before the Board, they were not given the opportunity, because the Board did not conduct a full hearing, that is, a proceeding, in which all the interested parties could have appeared and been heard. Therefore, the second reason given why the Board’s decision was not an adjudication is without merit, because the Court should not determine what should have occurred by reasoning from what did, in fact, occur. As to the first reason, I agree the Home Rule Charter does not provide for a hearing. Rather, it requires the Board to examine the petition. But, it is now well established that Section 4 of the Local Agency Law, 53 P.S. § 11304, mandates an adversary hearing whenever a determination is made that otherwise constitutes an “adjudication” under Section 2(1), 53 P.S. § 11302(1).4 Since the Board’s determination instantly was within the definitional purview of “adjudication” in all respects except as to the Committee appearing in a proceeding, i. e., an adversary hearing, before the Board, and since Section 4 of the Local Agency Law, 53 P.S. § 11304, if applicable, would have required such a hearing before the Board at which the Committee could have appeared, I see no reason not to read the Home *54Rule Charter in conjunction with the Local Agency Law and rule that the Local Agency Law mandates the examination of the recall petition pursuant to the Home Rule Charter be conducted in the context of an adversary hearing.5 The Charter has the effect of a statute and it should be read in conjunction with the Local Agency Law.
If such had been done instantly, the Local Agency Law would have mandated a full adversary hearing prior to the Board making its final determination, and the Committee and the Mayor could have appeared at the hearing to present evidence and advocate their respective positions with regard to the standard to be applied in determining the validity of the petition and the application of those standards to the petition involved herein. This procedure would have eliminated the fundamental injustice which I believe occurred in these proceedings.
Even assuming mandamus was the proper form of action, I would still remand this case for a hearing, de novo. *55As noted above, the trial court rejected an offer of proof by Mayor Rizzo to show that numerous affidavits filed as part of the recall petition were false.6 The court said:
“[Njone of it is relevant to this particular proceeding which the court perceives as limiting the court to a review of what the Board did, what legal actions they have taken.”
This ruling, even if mandamus was the proper form of action,7 was error.
The effect of this ruling was to limit the scope of review in the mandamus action to that which the Board considered and thereby deny Mayor Rizzo the opportunity to present evidence to establish the invalidity of the recall petition. Furthermore, the ruling also so limited the scope of the proceeding that the Committee could not introduce evidence as to the validity of the petition, in rebuttal or otherwise. Thus, competent, relevant, and *56perhaps determinative evidence which would aid in establishing the validity or invalidity of the recall petition has never been introduced at any time in these proceedings. Under such circumstances, I am not prepared to rule on the validity of the recall petition even if mandamus was the proper form of action.
Both the Committee and the Mayor have been denied the opportunity to present relevant evidence in order to properly advocate, in the same forum and before the same decision maker, the validity of the recall petition. This opportunity, indeed this right, is fundamental to our system of law, and I am not prepared to rule on the other issues presented and thereby finally determine the validity of the recall petition where the parties have been denied this right.
If the Local Agency Law is applicable as I have suggested, then all the parties should have been notified of the proceedings and allowed to present relevant and competent evidence at a hearing before the Board. The Court of Common Pleas would then have limited review, and consideration of only that which was presented to the Board would have been proper. If the Local Agency Law is inapplicable, then as with election cases, the mandamus proceeding should not have been limited. In either event, both the Committee and the Board should have been afforded a full and fair opportunity to litigate the validity of the recall petition either before the Board or the court. As the record has been presented to this Court no full and fair opportunity to litigate has been afforded the parties. Thus, I respectfully suggest this Court should determine the proper procedure to be followed, vacate the order of the Court of Common Pleas, and remand the record for a hearing de novo.

. The affidavit is required to be executed by the circulator of each sheet if the sheet is to have any legal validity.

. As to the court’s ruling that mandamus was proper, it should he noted that the authorities relied upon in support of this ruling antedated the passage of the Local Agency Law, Act of December 2, 1968, P.L. 1133, § 1 et seq., 53 P.S. § 11301, et seq. As to the court’s ruling that its scope of review was limited to the administrative record, it should be noted that this was based on precedent where the administrative agency conducted a full hearing; instantly, of course, the Board did not.

. Section 2 of the Local Agency Law, 53 P.S. § 11302(1) provides:
“(1) ‘Adjudication’ means any final order, decree, decision, determination or ruling by a local agency affecting personal or property rights, privileges, immunities or obligations of any or all of the parties to the proceeding in which the adjudication is made, but shall not mean any final order, decree, decision, determination or ruling based upon a proceeding before a court, or which involves the seizure or forfeiture of. property, or which involves paroles or pardons.”

. See, e. g., Young v. Littlestown Area School District, 24 Pa. Cmwlth. 621, 358 A.2d 120 (1976); Kudasik v. Board of Dir., Port Allegheny School District, 23 Pa.Cmwlth. 208, 350 A.2d 887 (1976); Flinn v. Pittenger, Sec. Ed., 19 Pa.Cmwlth. 54, 338 A.2d 735 (1975); Hutnik v. Duquesne School District, 8 Pa.Cmwlth. 387, 302 A.2d 873 (1973). Cf. Nicolella v. Trinity A. Sch. Dist., 444 Pa. 544, 281 A.2d 832 (1971).

. In his dissenting opinion, Mr. Justice Roberts argues that de novo review by a court should not follow an administrative determination regarding a recall petition as is required with a nomination petition under the Election Code, Act of June 3, 1937, P.L. 1333, Art. IX, § 976, as amended, 25 P.S. § 2936, because of the vast number of signatures involved in a recall petition. And while Mr. Justice Roberts does not suggest that because of this factor a full and fair hearing is required at the administrative level pursuant to the Local Agency Law, his position fully supports the view that the Local Agency Law should apply such that an administrative hearing is required and review by the court limited following the administrative determination. To the extent that the failure to express a view that the Local Agency Law is applicable instantly or that a full administrative hearing is otherwise required implies that such a hearing is not required at the administrative level, I cannot agree with Mr. Justice Roberts. Whether in the context of a nomination petition where a full hearing is afforded before the court, or in the context of a recall petition where a full hearing is arguably required before the administrative body, a full hearing is required at some level of the proceedings, be it before the administrative body or the court, because recall petitions confront the decision maker with triable issues of fact and a hearing is therefore essential. Indeed, the Election Code clearly recognizes this because it provides for a full and fair hearing before the court.

. In his dissenting opinion, n. 27, Mr. Justice Pomeroy implies the Mayor’s offer, if proved, would not establish the signatures were not genuine but only that some affidavits were “irregular.” I cannot agree. The offer, if proved, would establish the affidavits were false. If false, the affidavits would have to be disregarded. The Charter requires rejection of any sheet not having an affidavit. 351 Pa.Code § 9.9-101(3). Thus, the offer, if proved, because of the number of allegedly false affidavits and because of the number of sheets and signatures thereon that could not then be counted, would have shown the petition to be numerically insufficient to warrant a recall. Nor can I agree that a court’s discretion is so broad as to preclude the Mayor from presenting evidence as to the validity of the petition at any level of the proceedings.

. The ruling would have been correct if, as I have suggested earlier, the Local Agency Law was applicable and the Board was thereby required to conduct an adversary hearing because in that context the evidence could have been introduced at the hearing before the Board. But, since it is said the Local Agency Law is inapplicable and thus the Mayor and the Committee had no right to appear at a hearing before the Board and present evidence when the Board conducted its examination, the ruling in the context of a mandamus action was clearly erroneous as the opinion of the Chief Justice recognizes. But the opinion of the Chief Justice fails to recognize how this erroneous ruling, in effect, denied the parties any opportunity ever to fully and fairly litigate the validity of the petition before the same decision maker and in the same forum.