Categories: In the spotlight
Date: December 06, 2005
Title: Beasley Firm Sues Commonwealth on Behalf of Judges for Pay Raise Controversy
On the Raise's Edge by Asher Hawkins
In Sheppard v. Casey, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Albert W. Sheppard Jr.'s petition for writ of mandamus requests that the justices order Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr. not to reduce state judges' salaries nor take back funds already paid to them as a result of Act 44 of July 2005, which created the pay raises.
Sheppard is being represented by James Beasley Jr. and Dion Rassias of the Beasley Firm.
Rassias said Sheppard has told him that officials from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts have advised him and other state judges that future pay checks will be reduced by the amount they were increased once the pay raises were passed in July.
(While the raises for legislative and executive branch officials technically weren't scheduled to take place until well into 2006, all state judges' salaries increased immediately after the pay raises were approved by the Legislature in July.)
The AOPC's spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment; nor could Casey's press office.
Kate Philips, spokeswoman for Gov. Edward Rendell, declined to comment on Sheppard's petition.
Also yesterday, Robert Heim of Dechert confirmed that he plans to file today a similar petition on behalf of Orphans' Court Judge John W. Herron, a former trial division administrative judge.
Sheppard's petition rests on two linchpin arguments: that the Pennsylvania Constitution prohibits the diminishing of state jurists' salaries, unless the same thing happens to those of all other salaried officers of the commonwealth; and that longstanding precedent of the state Supreme Court supports the argument that the Legislature should not be permitted to reduce judicial salaries.
"Petitioner has been a dedicated public servant who, at 68 years old, has only two more years on the bench," Beasley wrote in the petition filed yesterday with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. "He asserts this important writ of mandamus to correct the critical lapse in constitutional judgment by the Legislature. The Legislature's political skullduggery has improperly disregarded the most basic and fundamental framework of our Constitution's separation of powers."
Citing Article V, Section 16 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, Beasley stressed in the petition that unless every single salaried officer has his or her salary reduced, the state's jurists can't be subject to a pay cut.
In an interview yesterday, he pointed out that members of the state's Liquor Control Board and Department of Corrections who are technically salaried officers of the commonwealth have not been involved in this year's pay raise imbroglio.
"What the Legislature is trying to do is play fast and loose with who's a salaried employee, and who got a raise," Rassias said yesterday evening.
Sheppard's argument relies on a line of state Supreme Court decisions beginning with the 1904 decision in Commonwealth v. Mathues.
"If [the Legislature] can pass a law reducing the salaries of judges, then they can pass a law practically sweeping away the salaries entirely, and if they can practically sweep away the salaries - 'the power over a man's subsistence amounting to a power over his will' - they can crush and destroy the whole judicial department of the government," the justices wrote in their 1932 opinion in Bailey v. Walters, which quoted Mathues.
Heim said Herron's petition will be filed with both the Commonwealth and state Supreme courts.
"Judge Herron feels very strongly about the principle here," Heim said. "He feels that the judges of all the courts of the commonwealth are very hardworking, that they haven't had an increase in their pay - other than COLA adjustments - since 1992, and he thinks their compensation by a substantial measure is not in accord with the contributions they make."
Beasley said Sheppard's main goal is to have the pay raise repeal legislation deemed unconstitutional.
"Get rid of [the repeal legislation]," he said, "and if the Legislature wants to try again, more power to them."