Article XI, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution sets out the process for amending the constitution. It ends with these words: “When two or more amendments shall be submitted they shall be voted on separately.”
On January 11, in regular session, the Republican-dominated Pennsylvania Senate, in an almost entirely partisan manner, passed Senate Bill 1, an amalgam of three proposed constitutional amendments that, once agreed to by the House, would go before the voters for final approval.
The first of these amendments is the almost universally supported proposal to suspend the statute of limitations so that victims of childhood sexual assault can seek civil damages from persons or entities responsible for the crime.
The second proposed amendment would enable the General Assembly to override the regulatory authority of the executive branch by majority vote.
The third proposed amendment would require voters to present government-issued identification with his or her ballot.
All three amendments, in identical language, had been approved in legislation passed by the previous General Assembly — a necessary step as detailed in Article XI, Section 1.
Shortly after the current General Assembly — the 207th in the Commonwealth’s history — convened on January 3, Governor Wolf, who would remain in office for another two weeks, called them to go into special session “to address the statute of limitations for claims involving childhood sexual abuse.”
What makes a special session special is, according to the state constitution, that “in special session, there shall be no legislation upon subjects other than those designated in the proclamation of the Governor calling such session.”
The Governor’s call was a reaction to the election of Mark Rozzi as Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been in the forefront of the effort to get the statute-of-limitations amendment passed, and who himself was a victim of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.
The Governor’s call was also a “mea culpa” because his Department of State failed to advertise, as constitutionally required, a previous formulation of this same amendment twice approved by the General Assembly. That failure prevented the proposed amendment from going to the voters in 2022.
Governor Wolf issued his call for a special session on January 6. By then, Speaker Rozzi was already embroiled in the controversy over the rules by which the narrowly divided and highly contentious House of Representatives is to conduct itself during its session.
On that day Speaker Rozzi said this: “[L]et me be clear: As long as I am Speaker of the House of Representatives, the House will consider no other legislation until the General Assembly passes the language of Representative Gregory’s constitutional amendment.”
Representative Gregory is the prime sponsor of the original amendment. He is also a victim of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. In his statement on January 6, Rozzi also said this: “We are on a tight timeline. Pursuant to our constitution, this amendment must pass both the House and the Senate by the first week of February to be placed on the May primary ballot. If we are late, we risk this life saving amendment not being placed on the ballot until the November General Election.”
We are now in the first week of February. The House has yet to agree on a set of rules. In fact, without rules, the House has accomplished nothing whatsoever since electing a Speaker on January 3. Rozzi, with his gavel, has adjourned the House until February 27. By February 27, the results of three special election to fill vacancies in the House will be official. The three vacancies are to represent districts that in all likelihood will go Democratic. So, on February 27, the Democrats should have enough (barely) of a majority to get a set of rules passed. We’ll see.
But back to the Senate on January 11. In a thumb to the eye of the outgoing Governor, and perhaps to the new Speaker too, the Senate ignored altogether the call for a special session. Here I am delving into the “inside baseball” of how the Senate works.
The Senate, unlike the House, agreed on its rules the same day it convened.
Senate Bill 1 was introduced on January 6 by Senator Dan Laughlin of Erie County. Laughlin’s bill concerned only the constitutional amendment about voter identification.
When Senate Bill 1 came out of the Senate State Government Committee three days later, the committee chairman Chris Dush, who represents a large portion of the northcentral state, made sure the constitutional amendment about overriding executive regulatory authority was attached.
When Senate Bill 1 was reported out of the Rules Committee on January 10, the constitutional amendment on statute of limitations was added. This amendment became, in effect, the main feature of the bill.
Thus, in one bill, three different Articles of the State Constitution are to be changed for three different purposes.
Maybe you can construe the constitutional instruction “When two or more amendments shall be submitted they shall be voted on separately” to mean that as long as the amendments are eventually presented to the voters in a manner “separate and distinct,” then everything is okay. You could. But you wouldn’t be intellectually honest.
For Article XI, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution — the article and section dealing with amending the constitution — also states that the “yeas and nays” of each member voting on the question “shall” be recorded in the Senate Journal. Three proposed “separate and distinct” amendments should require three “separate and distinct” “yeas and nays.”
It is hard to be against the amendment to provide the two-year window from the statute of limitations to allow victims of childhood sexual assault to file for civil damages to compensate for the crime committed upon them.
But the need for a constitutional amendment to require government-issued identification in order to vote is an issue that reasonable people can disagree upon. It might even be an issue that could better be resolved by statute rather than by changing the constitution.
And the issue that the Governor’s regulatory authority should be overridden by majority vote of the General Assembly is also an issue upon which reasonable people can disagree. Perhaps this question would necessitate constitutional change. If so, it would seem better that the legislature take up the question exclusively on its own merit and not “piggy-back” it on a proposed amendment that, on its own merit, is certain to pass.
Thus, Republicans in the Senate, and it would seem Republicans in the House as well, are preening themselves as “fighters” for their base constituency by supporting “piggy-backed” constitutional amendments. It all seems too clever by half.
The Forest Seen Through the Trees
There is another constitutional amendment that the Republican majority of the Pennsylvania Senate are not advancing, as yet anyway, through regular session — even though that amendment was passed by Republicans in the Assembly’s last session and, with a successive passing, could go to the voters for final approval or disapproval.
That amendment would add a section to the state constitution’s Declaration of Rights: “This constitution does not grant the right to taxpayer-funded abortion or any other right to abortion.”
If one proposed constitutional amendment can be joined, dispassionately, with one or more other proposed constitutional amendments in the same individual piece of legislation, why not this amendment too?
Is it because coupling this proposed amendment about abortion with the amendment to benefit victims of childhood sexual assault would be like trying to join by hand two live electrical wires — neither of which is the neutral?
Assuming this anti-abortion amendment remains a Republican priority, Republicans seem to be conceding that this amendment would not advance in the narrowly divided House — even if attached to the statute of limitations amendment. Which, by extension, is an admission that each and every proposed constitution amendment deserves its own individual consideration in the legislature.
Correction: I have been “one off” in my General Assembly numerical designations. What I mean is this: until this post I have been calling the current General Assembly the 206th General Assembly, and the previous General Assembly, the 205th General Assembly. The current General Assembly is the 207th, and the previous General Assembly, of course, the 206th. I am embarrassed by the error. I don’t have a lot of readers. But I want to get it right for those I do have.