The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the dismissal of a Right-to-Know Law appeal from an OAG denial, holding that the Office of Open Records has no jurisdiction over such appeals because Section 503(d)(1) of the RTKL expressly requires the Attorney General to designate its own appeals officer, a jurisdictional carve-out analogous to the one applicable to judicial agencies.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed a $14,000 civil penalty and three-year suspension of lead abatement licenses for Howland Company and its owner, holding that the Bureau of Occupational and Industrial Safety need not introduce written risk assessment reports or prove actual lead presence to establish violations of the Lead Certification Act, and that 14 violations across five job sites over 16 months—despite prior Bureau warnings—supported the suspension term.
The Commonwealth Court affirmed the PLRB’s dismissal of a nonprofit’s report of alleged illegal PSEA political contributions as untimely, holding that PERA’s four-month statute of limitations in Section 1505 applies to Section 1701 reports of union political-contribution violations—not only to traditional unfair practice charges—because the Board’s own regulation treats such reports as “charges” subject to the Board’s investigatory framework established in Trometter.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reversed a trial court’s denial of summary judgment and restored full governmental immunity to the Borough of Prospect Park, holding that an 11-foot-wide paved park pathway that dead-ends past a pavilion is not a “street” under the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act’s Streets Exception—and that the Sidewalk Exception therefore also fails because there is no qualifying street to adjoin.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania held that the 2020 amendment changing mandatory parole review for rape convicts from annual to triennial (61 Pa.C.S. § 6139(a)(3.3)) does not violate the ex post facto clause, because it alters only when the Board must conduct review—not the standards for granting parole or the Board’s authority to act on its own motion sooner.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania vacated a Beaver County trial court’s denial of a real estate tax exemption for a land conservation trust, holding that the trial court misapplied the HUP purely-public-charity test by merging the “charitable purpose” and “indefinite public benefit” factors, improperly requiring evidence of significant public visitation, and ignoring the Environmental Rights Amendment and the Charitable Purposes Act in the charitable-purpose analysis.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed the Commonwealth Court and held that “skill game” devices—electronic gaming terminals marketed as legal skill-based alternatives to slot machines—are “slot machines” under the Gaming Act and prohibited “gambling devices” under the Crimes Code, with a 120-day stay giving operators time to adjust before enforcement resumes.
The Commonwealth Court vacated a permanent injunction granted in a decade-long Chester County land development dispute, holding that the trial court wrongly applied collateral estoppel: because the prior declaratory judgment action was dismissed for lack of standing, the issues were never actually litigated, and the identity-of-issues element was independently unsatisfied because the prior case turned on the Prevailing Wage Act while the injunction proceeding did not.
The Commonwealth Court held that nonprofit, member-owned golf clubs are not “businesses” subject to a local business privilege tax on membership dues and assessments, because the clubs do not operate for profit and their members do not receive commercially taxable “services” — rejecting Radnor Township’s reliance on Fish v. Township of Lower Merion.
The Commonwealth Court held that Pennsylvania’s Real Estate Tax Sale Law exceptions procedure does not permit constitutional challenges to the validity of a tax levy, affirming dismissal of a pro se taxpayer’s Uniformity Clause attack on Delaware County school taxes as beyond the scope of the RETSL exceptions process.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, sitting en banc, upheld Luzerne County’s $10,100 fee for bulk CAMA property assessment data, holding that Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law permits market-value-based fees for complex data sets — not merely the cost of duplication — and that coordinating pricing information across counties does not constitute bad faith.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reversed the denial of a license suspension appeal, holding that Court Administration’s ten-year failure to schedule a hearing — despite repeated court orders to do so — constituted an extraordinary government-caused delay that violated the licensee’s due process rights under the Middaugh framework and mandated dismissal of the suspension.
The Commonwealth Court vacated a PUC declaratory order that assigned Conrail responsibility for Delair Bridge drainage maintenance over I-95, holding that the 1966 PUC order’s plain text assigned that duty to PennDOT and that the PUC’s Oxford comma-based reasoning was clearly erroneous.
The Commonwealth Court vacated the UCBR’s denial of benefits, holding that wages from a prior denied unemployment claim cannot be precluded from a subsequent eligibility determination because the wage-preclusion rule applies only when prior benefits were actually awarded.
In a precedential opinion, the Commonwealth Court vacated the OOR’s procedural dismissal of a RTKL appeal, exercised de novo review rather than remanding, and affirmed the PSP’s denial of records relating to a noncriminal death investigation, holding that the noncriminal investigation exemption applied.
In an en banc published opinion, the Commonwealth Court holds that Whistleblower Law claims against Commonwealth agencies fall within its exclusive original jurisdiction and are not subject to the Section 761(a)(1)(v) exception for tort-like actions, resolving the question with binding precedent for the first time.
In a published opinion, the Commonwealth Court declares that simple assault is not a crime of violence under Act 235 and that PSP exceeded its statutory authority by creating a regulatory catch-all allowing denial of lethal-weapons certification for “any other crime” beyond the enumerated crimes of violence.