Court Opinion

ID: 9717359
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:02:17.949618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.850831
License: Public Domain

*470PAPADAKOS, Justice,
dissenting.
Although I fully understand the rationale used by Mr. Chief Justice Nix in deciding that the people of Pennsylvania have the right and power to discriminate against themselves on the basis of age, I must dissent because I believe that the expansion of fundamental civil rights by our enlightened courts in the recent past now mandates that the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of age is a fundamental civil right that is protected by Article I, Section 26 of our Pennsylvania Constitution wherein it states:
§ 26. No Discrimination by Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.
Neither the Commonwealth nor any political subdivision thereof shall deny to any person the enjoyment of any civil right, nor discriminate against any person in the exercise of any civil right.
The majority make much of the fact that Article I, Section 26, restricts discriminatory actions by government and does not prevent the people, in whom ultimate power reposes, from exercising any and all forms of discrimination not prohibited by the Federal Constitution. Perhaps such an analysis is true under certain conditions. But I believe it is not relevant to this case.
Article V, Section 16 of our Constitution provides, in relevant part:
(a) Justices, judges and justices of the peace shall be retired upon attaining the age of seventy years____ (Emphasis added).
This section does not say that jurists shall retire; rather, they shall be retired — who is to effect the retirement of jurists if it is not government? I read this section as imposing upon government the obligation of removing jurists from office solely on the basis of age. Such action by government, as admitted by the majority, is prohibited by Article I, Section- 26 of the Pennsylvania Constitution which is, in effect, part of the Bill of Rights of all of the people.
I would reverse the Commonwealth Court.