In a recent news story, the deputy director of the Judiciary Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice explained that donations to state Supreme Court justices typically come from “in-state business interests and trial lawyers — groups who look at the court as being important to their economic bottom lines.”
The director got part of it right.
The reality is that in 2015, trial lawyers and union special interests — not business interests — were the deep-pocketed spenders in Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court elections, doling out millions of dollars to elect state Supreme Court Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht to the bench. These special interests gave big because they expected these justices to help their economic bottom lines.
That’s exactly what’s happened.
Take government unions, for example. In 2018, Justices Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht ruled that former Gov. Tom Wolf could forcibly unionize 20,000 home care workers, which could lead to millions of additional dollars per year flowing into union coffers.
Think about it for a minute. Oftentimes, home care workers are family members caring for ailing loved ones. But SEIU and AFSCME — two major government unions with huge lobbying and political pocketbooks — saw a chance to forcibly expand their base of union members, not to mention their bank accounts of union dues.
Wolf, a top recipient of union donations, was all too eager to oblige and issued an executive order forcing unionization on these home care workers.
The Commonwealth Court invalidated Wolf’s order, but Supreme Court Justices Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht—each of whom received campaign contributions from both SEIU and AFSCME during the 2015 election season, per campaign finance reports—came to the unions’ rescue.
They ruled in favor of the unions at the expense of thousands of Pennsylvania home care workers, overturning the lower Commonwealth Court.
As the non-profit public interest law firm that argued against Wolf’s order explained, the court’s ruling “unionizes parents against their disabled children, sons and daughters against their elderly parents, and … friends against friends.”
The only winners in this case were the unions that fought to increase their bottom lines by electing Justices Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht.
Unions aren’t the only special interest that contributed big in anticipation of big returns. Trial lawyers also gave millions of dollars to these three justices in 2015.
And in 2022, the Supreme Court handed trial lawyers a huge gift.
That year, the court said that trial lawyers could file cases in plaintiff-friendly Philadelphia, even if the alleged offense happened elsewhere. This so-called “venue shopping” delivered a financial windfall for trial lawyers even as it hurt healthcare access for everyday Pennsylvanians.
We’ve all seen news of hospitals in Pennsylvania closing their doors. We also all know that health care access remains not simply a priority but, in some areas, a crisis. Amid all this, the court’s allowance of venue shopping has made Pennsylvania one of the hardest states in which to run a hospital.
These rulings don’t even begin to touch on these justices’ terrible rulings on mail-in ballots that ignored the law at Democrats’ request or the justices’ 2018 court-imposed gerrymandering of congressional districts.
Those arguing Justices Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht should be retained for another 10 years on the court pretend to be impartial actors who care only about fairness and independence. Their record of pushing justices to ignore or rewrite the law proves they are anything but.
Our justices should do one thing: Interpret the law as written. Not rewrite it to achieve a particular outcome.
That’s why on November 4, I urge Pennsylvanians to vote no on retaining Justice Christine Donohue, no on retaining Justice Kevin Dougherty, and no on retaining Justice David Wecht.
It’s time to term-limit these justices and give voters the chance to elect new, impartial justices to our state Supreme Court.
Matthew J. Brouillette is president and CEO of Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, an independent, nonpartisan 501(c)(6) membership organization dedicated to improving the economic environment and educational opportunities in Pennsylvania.
No comments:
Post a Comment