Court Opinion

ID: 9716022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:23:53.328465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:52.231319
License: Public Domain

*158Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Horace Stern, Mr. Justice Jones and Mr. Justice Chidsey:
We fully concur in the opinion of the court and would not presume to add to the discussion were it not for certain obvious misconceptions that appear to have arisen in regard to the issue involved.
At the outset it is important to note that our present decision is necessarily confined to the one question presented by the instant appeals, namely, the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Act of August 26, 1953 (No. 433). We are not passing, either expressly or impliedly, upon the general power of the legislature to enact laws regulating the affairs of the .City, nor upon the power of the Council of the City by resolution, approved by a vote of the people, to amend the Charter in any manner that may be desired, as provided by the First Class City Home Rule Act of April 21, 1949, P. L. 665. Nor is it within our right or power to volunteer an advisory opinion on questions concerning the Charter that are not presented for decision by the appeals before us.
It has been suggested that the result of the majority opinion will be to make it constitutionally impossible, even for the people of Philadelphia, to disestablish civil service or to permit the employees of some of the City departments, and not others, to be politically active. That question is likewise not here involved. But, since it has been injected into the discussion, it is not amiss to point out that we are neither holding nor even implying that a resolution of Council, approved by a vote of the people (the procedure for amending the Charter), is the passage of a law within the contemplation of Article III, Section 7, of the Constitution whose operative prohibitions are directed against the passage by the legislature of certain laws.
*159The question with which this case is concerned is whether the passage of the Act of 1953, being as the majority opinion clearly demonstrates a local and special law, violates two specific prohibitions of Article III, Section 7, of the Constitution, namely, changing the charters of cities, and granting special or exclusive privileges or immunities. It is argued that the City-County Consolidation Amendment authorizes the enactment by the legislature of laws respecting Philadelphia without restraint from these or, in fact, any of the inhibitions so specified in the Constitution. The fallacy of this contention appears upon a moment’s reflection on the wording of the Amendment concerning local and special laws. All that the Amendment did in such regard was to lift the restraint on local and special legislative action with respect to merely the following two of the twenty-eight inhibited subjects listed in Section 7 of Article III, namely, “Regulating the affairs of counties, cities” and other municipal or political subdivisions and “Creating offices, or prescribing the powers and duties of officers in counties, cities” and such other subdivisions. That leaves untouched by the Amendment the twenty-six other prohibited subjects of legislation among which are the changing of charters of cities, towns or villages and the granting “to any corporation, association or individual any special or exclusive privilege or immunity . . As the majority opinion recognizes and plainly declares, both of those prohibitions are violated by the Act of 1953.
. The fallacy becomes all the more apparent when it is realized that the remaining prohibited subjects of local or special legislation embrace such matters as “granting divorces”, “changing the law of descent or succession”, “changing the rules of evidence in any judicial proceeding or inquiry before courts”, “fixing *160the rate of interest”, “exempting property from taxation”, “regulating labor, trade or manufacturing”, etc. It seems too obvious for discussion that the Consolidation Amendment, by granting to the General Assembly the power by local and special laws to regulate the affairs of the city and create offices or prescribe the powers and duties of officers thereof, did not thereby confer power upon the legislature to enact separate and distinct laws for Philadelphia concerning, for example, the granting of divorces, the changing of rules of evidence in court proceedings, the fixing of the rate of interest, etc. And, if it be conceded, therefore, as it must, that the Consolidation Amendment does not authorize the legislature’s enactment of local and special laws in violation of all such prohibitions, how can it be maintained that the Amendment does permit the passage of laws in violation of the two constitutional prohibitions here involved, which are equally not exempted by the terms of the Amendment?
It is argued that the power to regulate the affairs of cities necessarily and inherently involves the right to change their charters. If that were so, the inclusion in Section 7 of Article III of the inhibition against changing the charters of municipalities would have been unnecessary, the regulation of the affairs of municipalities having already been inhibited by the constitutional provision. Manifestly, many laws might be passed by the legislature regulating the .affairs of cities without changing in any way the provisions of their charters, as is strikingly demonstrated by the very Act here under consideration. Sections 2, 3 and 4, the constitutionality of which is not challenged, enact very important provisions regulating the affairs of the City of Philadelphia without changing any of the provisions of the Home. Rule Charter,..... .... ....
*161As to the granting of special privileges and immunities, it is beyond question, as the majority opinion correctly holds, that Section 5 of the Act of 1953 effects such a grant. Our cases are legion which proclaim the principle of constitutional law that, in order to support a grant of special privileges and a withholding of such privileges from others, there must be at least some semblance of a logical and reasonable basis for differentiation between the individuals or groups so relatively classified. In the present instance, the privilege of political activity is not granted, or denied, to all City employees or to certain defined classes of such employees, but merely to the employees of four particular City offices, — clearly an arbitrary selection since, as the majority opinion points out, those offices have nothing in common with one another nor any characteristics which distinguish them as a class from other offices all of which are now a part of the City government. While it is true that the ban of political activity was the established rule in offices of the former City of Philadelphia, whereas the employees of the offices of the County of Philadelphia were not restrained from engaging in political activity, that differentiation, permissible as it undoubtedly was as between the government of counties and the government of cities, clearly became unjustified when, by reason of the Consolidation Amendment, all County offices became City offices and thereby component parts of the municipal government.
We believe that the foregoing sufficiently demonstra ies that all the contrary contentions to which we have referred fail to impair the majority opinion.