Court Opinion

ID: 9715813
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:15:04.219982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:38.213447
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
The construction which the opinion of Mr. Justice Nix places upon section 11-1151 of the School Code to permit the demotion of appellee employees without a prior hearing is contrary to both established principles of statutory construction and the longstanding case law of this Commonwealth.
Section 1922 of the Statutory Construction Act provides:
“In ascertaining the intention of the General Assembly in the enactment of a statute the following presumptions, among others, may be used:
(4) That when a court of last resort has construed the language used in a statute, the General Assembly in subsequent statutes on the same subject matter intends the same construction to be placed upon such language.”
In section 3 of the Tenure Act of 1937, the Legislature provided:
“There shall be no demotion of any professional employe, either in salary or in type of position, without the consent of the said employe, or if such consent is not received, then such demotion shall be subject to the right to a hearing before the board of school directors (or board of public education), and an appeal in the same manner as *441hereinbefore provided in the case of the dismissal of a professional employe.”
In 1939 this Court construed the hearing provision of section 3 and determined that the Legislature had intended that demotion hearings, like dismissal hearings, be held before the proposed effective date of the action. Smith v. Philadelphia School District, 334 Pa. 197, 5 A.2d 535 (1939). There, the Court stated:
“Section 3 of the Tenure Act requires that where there is a ‘demotion in salary’ there shall be a hearing in the same manner as provided in case of dismissal. Section 2 sets forth the procedure to be followed in conducting such hearings. It is there provided that charges shall be filed against the teacher and that at the hearing evidence shall be presented relative to those charges. The purpose of the hearing under this section is to protect the teachers from arbitrary discrimination by being subjected to unfounded or inadequate charges.”
Id., 334 Pa. at 205, 5 A.2d at 539.
In the School Code of 1949, the Legislature reenacted section 3 as section 11-1151, which provides, in language virtually identical to that of section 3, that a non-consensual demotion “shall be subject to the right to a hearing before a board of school directors and an appeal in the same manner as hereinbefore provided in the case of the dismissal of a professional employe.” Subsequently, in construing section 11-1151 of the 1949 School Code which reenacted the same language, this Court continued to adhere to its earlier interpretation. See Tassone v. Redstone Township School District, 408 Pa. 290, 183 A.2d 536 (1962); Smith v. Darby School District, 388 Pa. 301, 130 A.2d 661 (1957). The School Code has been amended once, in 1963. At that time, the language which had been construed since 1939 as requiring a hearing prior to demotion was left unchanged.
In these circumstances, the language of the hearing provision of section 11-1151 is no longer ambiguous. Rather, the *442ambiguity has been resolved by this Court’s construction of the language in the Tenure Act of 1937, the Legislature’s reenactment of the identical language in the School Code of 1949, and the statutorily mandated presumption that this Court had thus correctly construed the Legislature’s intention that a hearing be held prior to demotion. Statutory Construction Act of 1972, 1 Pa.C.S. § 1922(4), formerly Statutory Construction Act of 1937, 46 P.S. § 552(4). See Commonwealth v. Miller, 469 Pa. 24, 27, 364 A.2d 886, 887 (1976) (“statutes are not presumed to make changes in the rules and principles of the common law or prior existing law beyond what is expressly declared in their provisions”). Nonetheless, in complete disregard of the Legislature’s own statutory indication of its intention, the opinion of Mr. Justice Nix engages in a de novo grammatical analysis of the “ambiguous” provision tó arrive at the conclusion that the Legislature intended to permit demotions without prior individual hearings.
Not only is this conclusion contrary to established principles of statutory construction, but it also serves as the basis for a totally unnecessary remedy. Although acknowledging that the financial situation which gave rise to the present controversy no longer exists, the opinion of Mr. Justice Nix remands the record with directions to appellant School Board that it may demote appellees without a prior hearing “if present financial conditions so dictate.” As there has been no showing that the unusual set of facts on this record is likely to recur, this remedy is wholly advisory.
Because the result reached by the opinion of Mr. Justice Nix is without support in law and without support on the record, I dissent and would dismiss the appeal as having been improvidently granted.
O’BRIEN, C. J., and LARSEN, J., join in this dissenting opinion.