Court Opinion

ID: 9730483
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:13:55.285411+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:06.830714
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
For the second time in three months, the majority has crippled the efforts of the Legislature and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission to combat discrimination proscribed by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Law.* In Pennsylvania Human Relations Comm’n v. St. Joe Minerals Corp., 476 Pa. 302, 382 A.2d 731 (1978), the majority concluded that the Law does not authorize the PHRC to compel a party to answer written interrogatories designed to assist the PHRC’s investigation of alleged unlawful discriminatory practices. Today, the majority, applying the same discredited theory of limited statutory interpretation, concludes that the PHRC is without power to award compensatory damages for humiliation and mental anguish. I dissent.
Section 9 of the Law, 43 P.S. § 959, provides:
“If, upon all the evidence at the hearing, the Commission shall find that a respondent has engaged in or is engaging in any unlawful discriminatory practice as defined in this act, the Commission shall state its findings of fact, and shall issue and cause to be served on such respondent an order requiring such respondent to cease and desist from such unlawful discriminatory practice and to take such affirmative action including but not limited to hiring, *462reinstatement or upgrading of employes, with or without back pay, admission or restoration to membership in any respondent labor organization, or selling or leasing specified commercial housing upon such equal terms and conditions and with such equal facilities, services and privileges ' or lending money, whether or not secured by mortgage or otherwise for the acquisition, construction, rehabilitation, repair or maintenance of commercial housing, upon such equal terms and conditions to any person discriminated against or all persons as, in the judgment of the Commission, will effectuate the purposes of this act, and including a requirement for report of the manner of compliance.” (emphasis added)
Though the Law does not specifically empower the PHRC to award damages for mental anguish and humiliation, it provides that the PHRC is required to take “such affirmative action ... as, in the judgment of the Commission, will effectuate the purposes of this act.” The Legislature has made it plain that permissible remedial devices include, “but [are] not limited to” those enumerated.
This Court’s proper inquiry is therefore whether the PHRC has determined correctly that damages are a proper remedy for enforcing the Human Relations Law. An order requiring a party violating the Law to pay a victim compensatory damages would provide redress for the victim for deprivation of his civil rights as well as deterring future illegal discrimination. The Legislature surely had these important goals in mind when it enacted the Human Relations Law, and a remedy of damages is entirely consistent with other remedies available to the PHRC. The Legislature’s command that the provisions of the Human Relations Law be construed liberally, see Human Relations Law, § 12(a), 43 P.S. § 962(a); Pennsylvania Human Relations Comm’n v. Alto-Reste Park Cemetery Ass’n, 453 Pa. 124, 306 A.2d 881 (1973), as well as modern authority interpreting comparable statutes, e. g., Zahorian v. Russell Fitt Real Estate Agency, 62 N.J. 399, 301 A.2d 754 (1973), has once again been ignored by the majority. See Pennsylvania *463Human Relations Comm’n. v. St. Joe Minerals Corp., supra (Roberts, J., joined by Nix, J., dissenting).
Moreover, the majority errs even on its own terms. The majority concedes that the PHRC has discretion to tailor its relief by choosing from the various remedies available. The agency acted under the view that compensatory damages were a proper form of relief. Had the PHRC known that today the Court would hold that it lacked power to impose this form of relief, it might have shaped its order to include other remedies or to stiffen penalties validly imposed. Thus, so that the PHRC may have an opportunity to correct its order and to award the proper relief which it alone may determine, subject only to review for abuse of discretion, the majority should not affirm the order of the Commonwealth Court but should instead remand to the PHRC so that it may impose appropriate remedies not inconsistent with today’s unwise opinion.
I would reverse the order of the Commonwealth Court and reinstate the order of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Alternatively, even on the majority’s theory the proceedings should be remanded to the PHRC for reconsideration of its order in light of today’s holding.
NIX, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

 Act of October 27, 1955, P.L. 744, §§ 1 et seq., as amended, 43 P.S. §§ 951 et seq. (1964 and Supp. 1977).