Court Opinion

ID: 9701860
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:40:49.928382+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:30.231956
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Section 2152 of the Clinical Laboratory Act1 subjects a laboratory to regulation by the Department of Health if, but only if, the laboratory qualifies for such treatment by coming within the following definition :
“. . . any place, establishment or institution organized and operated primarily for the performance of all or any bacteriological, biochemical, microscopical, serological, or parasitological tests by the practical application of one or more of the fundamental sciences to material originating from the human body, by the use of specialized apparatus, equipment and methods, for the purpose of obtaining scientific data which may be *295used as an aid to ascertain the state of health.” 35 P.S. §2152 (Supp. 1976-77). (Emphasis added).
In the case at bar, appellant physicians averred in their complaint that their private medical offices were “established, organized and operated primarily to examine, treat and care for [their] patients . . . ”; that is to say, the physicians claimed as a fact that the performance of laboratory testing was not the primary purpose of their offices. The Department of Health, in its answer, admitted this specific averment of fact. Insofar, therefore, as the complaint prayed for an injunction prohibiting the Department of Health from subjecting the physicians’ own office laboratories to regulation under the Act, I believe the Commonwealth Court should have granted appellants’ motion for summary judgment. Beyond this, for the reasons set forth below, I would also hold that the additional relief prayed for by the doctors, viz., an order rescinding promulgation of the Department’s regulation here contested, should have been granted.
By the factual admission in its pleading referred to above the Department of Health acknowledges what is obvious: few, certainly not all, private medical offices fall within the § 2152 definition, “place [s] operated primarily for the performance of . tests.” Nevertheless, ignoring that touchstone to the applicability of the Clinical Laboratory Act, the Department has issued a regulation which extends the Act’s coverage to include, inter alia,
“. . . all clinical laboratories operated in private offices and, clinics of practitioners of the healing arts.” 28 Pa.Code § 5.1 (filed August 15, 1975).
(Emphasis supplied.)
The question thus posed is whether the Department, in issuing this regulation, has over-stepped its authority.
*296To determine whether the Department of Health possessed the power to promulgate the regulation here considered, initial inquiry must be addressed to the scope of the rule-making power which the legislature intended to grant to the Department. As was stated in Uniontown Area School District v. Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, 455 Pa. 52, 313 A.2d 156 (1973):
“There is a well-recognized distinction in the law of administrative agencies between the authority of a rule adopted by an agency pursuant to what is denominated by the textwriters as legislative rulemaking power and the authority of a rule adopted pursuant to interpretative rule-making power. The former type of rule ‘is the product of an exercise of legislative power by an administrative agency, pursuant to a grant of legislative power by the Legislative body’, and ‘is valid and is as binding upon a court as a statute if it is (a) within the granted power, (b) issued pursuant to proper procedure, and (c) reasonable’. .
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“An interpretative rule on the other hand depends for its validity not upon a iaw-making grant of power, but rather upon the willingness of a reviewing court to say that it in fact tracks the meaning of the statute it interprets. While courts traditionally accord the interpretation of the agency charged with administration of the act some deference, the meaning of a statute is essentially a question of law for the court, and, when convinced that the interpretative regulation adopted by an administrative agency is unwise or violative of legislative intent, courts disregard the regulation.” Id. at 76-78, 313 A.2d at 169. (Emphasis in original; footnote omitted).
The Clinical Laboratory Act provides that the Department of Health “shall have the power ... to adopt *297rules and regulations for the proper enforcement of this act with regard to the following:
“(1) Contents of application;
(2) Adequacy of laboratory quarters and equipment;
(3) Means and standards of accuracy of laboratory procedures;
(4) Definition of unethical practice and unethical advertising ;
(5) Any other matters it may deem advisable for the protection of the public and for carrying out the provisions and purposes of this act.” 35 P.S. § 2161.1. (Emphasis added).
It is apparent that there is here no semblance of a grant of legislative power to the Department. Compare Uniontown, supra, at 78, 313 A.2d 156. Rather, the legislature has accorded to the Department an “interpretative” rule-making power in aid of and limited to its enforcement function. The question, then, is whether the regulation purporting to extend the Act’s coverage to private physicians’ offices “in fact tracts the meaning of the statute it interprets.” Given the factual premise that physicians’ offices are not organized and operated primarily for purposes of clinical laboratory testing, it seems to me manifest that the answer must be in the negative. The Court nonetheless upholds the regulation for two reasons, neither of which I can accept.
First, it is said that even if a physician’s office is not, on the whole, established primarily for testing, the portion of the office wherein testing is performed is, in the language of section 2152, a “place . . . organized and operated primarily for the performance of . tests.” (Emphasis supplied.) With respect, this seems to me a disingenuous argument which distorts the plain meaning of the quoted section. Under this theory, no matter how small or inconsequential the area may be in which a doctor conducts a test, it would still be subject to *298the elaborate regulations promulgated by the Department. Obviously, inclusion of the word “primarily” as used in the statute was intended to prevent this result of requiring any and all laboratory testing, insignificant or not, to be subjected to the requirements of the Clinical Laboratory Act.
As a separate ground of decision, the Court holds that the deletion by the General Assembly in 1972 of a special exemption for physicians’ offices from the coverage of the Act evinces an intention to include such establishments within the purview of the Act as amended. The short answer to this point has been provided by the legislature itself:
“When the words of a statute are clear and free from all ambiguity, the letter of it is not to be disregarded under the pretext of pursuing its spirit.” Statutory Construction Act of 1972,1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1921(b).
Moreover, whatever purpose one ascribes to the 1972 amendment, it is manifest that there was a contemporaneous legislative decision to retain the original standard embodied in § 2152 and which is the sine qua non of the Act’s applicability, viz., whether an establishment is operated primarily for the performance of laboratory testing. It goes without saying that we are not at liberty to ignore that provision of the statute. See Statutory Construction Act, supra, § 1922(2).
Since the regulation before us disregards § 2152 by its application to all2 private office laboratories operated by physicians, regardless of whether or not laboratory testing is the primary purpose of the facilities, it follows *299that the Department of Health has impermissibly assumed the power to “make law.” See Uniontown, supra; Firemen’s Relief Assoc. of Washington v. Minehart, 430 Pa. 66, 241 A.2d 745 (1968); Commonwealth v. DiMeglio, 385 Pa. 119, 122 A.2d 77 (1965). I would therefore vacate the decree of the Commonwealth Court and enter summary judgment in favor of appellants.
O’BRIEN, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

. Act of December 5, 1972, P.L. 1388, 35 P.S. § 2151 et seq. (Supp.1976-77).

. The same regulation provides that a medical office will be exempted if the physician performs only certain enumerated tests, ten in number. The parties have stipulated that none of the individual physicians who are appellants herein qualified for this exemption and, furthermore, that “[s]ome or all of the members of the Pennsylvania Medical Society regularly and normally perform tests [which are not among the tests enumerated in the regulations as being exempt].”