Court Opinion

ID: 9755129
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:26:50.969034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:03.282487
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Jones:
I would reverse and dismiss the bill of complaint for the reason that the action of the learned court below was based on patently untenable ground and no other matter is properly before us for review at this time.
The court below held, and this court now confirms, that the procedure followed by Philadelphia’s City Council in the enactment of the ordinance providing for the proposed amendments to the City’s Home Buie Charter was “fatally defective in failing to meet the requirements of section 2-201 of the Charter in regard to amendments and to the advertisement and holding of public hearings.” That conclusion is plainly erroneous as the able and, to me, unanswerable brief of the City Solicitor irrefutably demonstrates on the basis of heretofore established law.
In passing, it may be noted that the mere introduction by current judicial legislation of the word “substantial” as the test for determining whether a change in a bill by amendment in committee of Council requires a second public hearing for its validity, when passed, will veritably open the floodgates of litigation *88involving legislation during the course of its passage in City Council and make a mockery of Home Buie. No other municipality in Pennsylvania is so bound. No ordinary town council will be so constricted.
But, we need treat here no longer with the procedure in Council, either in general or in detail. As this court now declares, the reasons advanced by the court below for its action in the instant case are correct and controlling. If that be so, then that is precisely where this court’s opinion should have stopped, viz., at the end of its third paragraph. Certainly, that is all that was necessary to the decision of affirmance.
Instead of so doing, however, the majority of this court, in plain disregard of long-established and uniform court practice, has seen fit to go ahead and decide a constitutional question related to the substance of the assailed amendments. In short, having prevented the proposed amendments from being effectively voted upon at the primary on April 24th, the majority take up the constitutional question and thereby give the amendments the coup de grace for all time. That decision in its implications and ramifications will prove to be a greater blow to the efficient administration of Philadelphia’s government under home rule than can now be imagined; and, the matter of the two proposed amendments sinks into relative insignificance.
The reason for the majority’s action in unnecessarily passing upon the constitutional question at this time is, to me, truly inexplicable. It is a cardinal rule appertaining to the juridical function that a constitutional question is not to be passed upon unless its solution is absolutely essential to the decision of the matter before the court. In Commonwealth, to use, v. Picard, 296 Pa. 120, 124, 145 A. 794, we said that “It is a fundamental rule that a court will never pass on *89the constitutionality of a statute unless it is absolutely necessary to do so in order to decide the cause before it.” See, also, to like effect Sablosky v. Messner, 372 Pa. 47, 60, 92 A. 2d 411; Altieri v. Allentown Retirement Board, 368 Pa. 176, 180, 81 A. 2d 884; Millcreek Township School District v. The Star Theatre, Inc., 172 Pa. Superior Ct. 291, 294, 94 A. 2d 53; and DeSarro v. Snowdon, 157 Pa. Superior Ct. 150, 154, 42 A. 2d 89. This basic rule has been reiterated and applied so many times by the Supreme Court of the United States as not to require extended citation here. An interesting example is Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 347, where Mr. Justice Brandéis in his concurring opinion, after stating the rule, illustrated it as follows: “Thus, if a case can be decided on either of two grounds, one involving a constitutional question, the other a question of statutory construction or general law, the Court will decide only the latter” (Emphasis supplied).
But, worse still, the constitutional question which the majority has dragged in for decision was injected into this proceeding prematurely; and, even now, it is not ripe for decision.
The jurisdiction of a court of equity may not be invoked to enjoin the enactment of a bill during the course of its passage through a legislative body. Such is the preponderant weight of authority throughout this Country and I say that without fear of successful contradiction.1 Would anyone have the temerity to *90suggest that the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County, sitting in equity, would extend its jurisdiction to a complainant who sought to enjoin the enactment of a bill during its passage through the legislature even though it was conceded on all sides that the bill, if passed, would be a gross and palpable violation of the Constitution?
In State v. Bigelow, 138 Ohio S. 497, 501, 37 N.E. 2d 41, which involved mandamus and injunction proceedings instituted to enjoin submission of proposed amendments to the home rule charter of the City of Cincinnati, the Supreme Court of Ohio said “As for the first ground, that the proposed charter amendment, if passed, would be in contravention of the Constitution of Ohio, it need only be said that it is prematurely raised in these actions. This court has repeatedly held that it will not interfere with the legislative process, either by mandamus or by injunction, to prevent the enactment of laws, simply because it is claimed that such legislation when passed will be unconstitutional. ... We hold therefore that the question whether the charter amendments here involved will be constitutional, when and if approved by the electors, is prematurely raised and not judicially cognizable” (Emphasis supplied).
It is implicit in State v. Bigelow, supra, that a referendum of the people for passing upon an ordinance, regulation or amendment of a home rule charter is an essential part of the legislative process. Such, indeed, was the direct ruling in Bardwell v. Parish Council, 216 La. 537, 550, 44 So. 2d 107, where it was said that “in those [referendum] elections, it is the people them*91selves who legislate. ... In truth, it is direct legislation, a power reserved to the people in contrast to a right granted to them.” It was further said in that case that “the rule that a court of equity will not interfere with proposed acts of legislation by a municipal council is, a fortiori, applicable to initiative and referendum elections . . .
Only this week in Addison Case, 385 Pa. 48, we recognized that the adoption of the Home Rule Charter by the electorate of Philadelphia was an act of legislation. We there said “Where [a charter] is adopted by a constitutionally empowered electorate, it affords an example of pure democracy — the sovereign people legislating directly and not by representatives in respect of the organization and administration of their local government. Specifically, therefore, Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter constitutes legislation (i.e., the adoption or enactment of a law by a competent body) just as much as did the City’s Charter of 1919 which the legislature itself enacted. . . . There is no special virtue in the word ‘legislative’ merely because it stems from the same root as ‘legislature’.”
The remedy against an allegedly illegal or invalid election is an injunction to restrain or quo warranto to oust after the results of the election have been determined. In Smith v. McCarthy, 56 Pa. 359, which dealt with an act of assembly providing for the consolidation of the City of Pittsburgh with some surrounding territory upon a favorable vote of the electorate involved, such an election was held. After the consolidation of the one district which had voted favorably, (out of three districts participating), a taxpayer sought to enjoin the election of a mayor, council, etc., by the vote of the consolidated district on the ground that the enabling Act was unconstitutional. This court held that it had no power to enjoin the election and *92that the complainant’s remedy lay in attacking by quo warranto the right of the elected officials to their offices.
The expenditure of public funds for holding what may later prove to have been an abortive election furnishes no valid reason for departing from the rule against a premature determination of a constitutional question arising in connection with the election. As was said in City of Austin v. Thompson, 147 Tex. 639, 648, 219 S.W. 2d 57, “It is of vastly greater importance that the courts refrain from interfering with the exercise of political functions.” And that is especially so where the referendum is fixed for the time of a regular election: Power v. Ratliff, 112 Miss. 88, 93, 72 So. 864. Here, the referendum is not only fixed for the time of the primary but amendment No. 3, which is not in controversy, will be voted upon at that election. Hence, neither expense nor inconvenience can justify judicial interference with the election by deciding prematurely a constitutional question that could and should be decided after the election.
The evil of the current decision lies not alone in the fact that it openly violates an unquestionable rule of decision applicable to constitutional questions but it actually decides the constitutional question erroneously. The inhibition of Article III, Section 7, of the State Constitution is directed against the General Assembly and not against a municipal council, and the word “law” as used in Article III, Section 7, means an act of the legislature and not an ordinance of a municipality. Those rules were enunciated by this court years ago and up to now have never been questioned or disregarded. See Baldwin v. City of Philadelphia, 99 Pa. 164, 170-171.
But, now, by an oversimplification of reasoning the majority hold that Article III, Section 7, applies to the *93Council of the City of Philadelphia because the legislature in the Home Rule Enabling Act of April 21,1918, prescribed that a charter formulated under the Act could authorize the City’s exercise “of any and all powers relating to its municipal functions, ... to the full extent that the General Assembly may legislate in reference thereto as to cities of the first class . . . .” That was a grant to the full extent of the General Assembly’s power and not a limitation on the reserved power in the people from the very nature of our constitutional system.
The majority, however, conclude that the inhibitions in Article III, Section 7, in respect of the General Assembly’s passage of any local or special law attached, ipso facto, to the Council of Philadelphia by virtue of the Home Rule Enabling Act. There is no justification whatsoever for fastening upon a municipality operating under a home rule charter the constitutional inhibitions on the General Assembly which were intended to curb the legislature from interfering in local affairs. In Klingler v. Bickel, 117 Pa. 326, 337, 11 A. 555, where Article III, Section 7, was directly involved, this court said “The object of the constitutional provision was clearly to prevent the legislature from interfering in local affairs by means of special legislation; and, if the town councils of cities and boroughs cannot regulate them, they are in a bad way indeed.” The restraint will prove to be a body blow to home rule.
Of course, the City is bound by both the National and State Constitutions. That goes without saying. For example, it may not deprive a person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; it may not impair the obligation of a contract; nor incur indebtedness except in a certain prescribed manner; nor increase its indebtedness beyond certain limits; etc. But *94Philadelphia’s City Council is not bound by the State constitutional inhibition against the G-eneral Assembly’s enactment of local or special laws. One of the most important reasons for the adoption of Home Rule is to so emancipate a municipality that it can legislate locally in a manner not constitutionally permitted the legislature.
And, where would the imposition on the City of Article III, Section 7, lead? If Council may not do one of the prohibited things, then it may not do any of the other interdicted subjects of legislation contained in that Section. Accordingly, the City will be unable to change the names of places; it will be unable to authorize the laying out, opening, altering or maintaining roads, highways, streets or alleys; it may not ordain with respect to the bridges over streams within its borders; it may not vacate roads, town plats, streets or alleys; it can take no action relating to cemeteries, grave yards or public grounds not belonging to the City; it may not provide for the opening or conducting of elections or fixing or changing the place of voting; nor may it create offices or prescribe the powers and duties of officers. Yet, an incorporated municipality, not under Home Rule, possesses power to legislate in regard to all of the above listed subjects and Philadelphia had such power under its Charter of 1919. See Klingler v. Bickel, supra, and Baldwin v. City of Philadelphia, supra.
Still further reasons why Article III, Section 7, of the Constitution does not apply to Philadelphia could be advanced. But, time does not admit of the extension. Had this appeal been handled in keeping with what I take to be compelling rules for judicial decision, this court would have reversed the decree and dismissed the bill as an attempt to enjoin an election. The proposed amendments would then have-been voted *95on at the referendum on April 24th. If they were defeated, there would be no question, constitutional or otherwise. If, however, they received a favorable vote, then an injunction against their enforcement could be sought and, if held to be unconstitutional, enforcement would be enjoined. Thus, without depriving anyone of a right, we would have time, not during a busy court sitting, to give the constitutional question the thorough consideration which its importance and portents rightly demand.
Finally, having thus arbitrarily foisted the inhibition of Article III, Section 7, on the City, the majority hold that, under the ruling in Clark v. Meade, 377 Pa. 150, 104 A. 2d 465, the City Council is incapable of increasing the number of exemptions of employees from the civil service restraint upon political activity. Nothing could be more fallacious. It by no means follows so simply that what the legislature could not do by local law affecting the civil service provisions of Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter, the people of that City may not do by their affirmative vote at a referendum on proposed amendments. Clark v. Meade did not rule to the contrary or even so imply. In the concurring opinion in that case, which three of us co-authored, the question of the City’s power in the premises was expressly reserved. And, it was pretty nearly implicit in the concurring opinion, at least I thought so, that the City had such power, when we said, — “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 néither holding nor even im*96plying 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.”

 E.g., see: Fletcher v. City of Paris, 377 Ill. 89, 35 N.E. 2d 329, 331, 333; Duggan v. City of Emporia, 84 Kan. 429, 438, 114 P. 235; Bardwell v. Parish Council of Parish of East Baton Rouge, 216 La. 537, 543, 44 So. 2d 107; Power v. Ratliff, 112 Miss. 88, 97-102, 72 So. 864; State, ex rel., Kittel v. Bigelow, 138 Ohio S. 497, 501, 37 N.E. 2d 41; State ex rel. Cranmer v. Thorson, 9 S.D. 149, 153, 154-157, 68 N.W. 202; see also State ex rel. Andrews v. Quam, *9072 N.D. 344, 348, 7 N.W. 2d. 738; City of Austin v. Thompson, 147 Texas 639, 644-645, 219 S.W. 2d 57. For further authority see 19 A.L.R. 2d 519.