Haverford Township v. Siegle

• Decision Date: 23 November 1942
• Docket Number: 19
• Citation: 28 A.2d 786,346 Pa. 1
• Parties: Haverford Township et al., Appellants, v. Siegle et al
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

28 A.2d 786

346 Pa. 1

Haverford Township et al., Appellants, v. Siegle et al

No. 19

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

November 23, 1942

Argued September 30, 1942.

Appeal, No. 19, Jan. T., 1943, from order of C.P. Delaware Co., June T., 1941, No. 689, in case of The Township of Haverford and The Board of Township Commissioners, v. Samuel Siegle et al. Order affirmed.

Declaratory judgment proceeding.

Order entered upholding constitutionality of statute, opinion by MacDADE, P.J. Plaintiffs appealed.

Order affirmed.

Robert T. McCracken, with him Arthur L. Reeser and William R. Toal for appellants.

Gilbert W. Oswald, with him Robert W. Beatty and Wm. A. Schnader, for appellees.

Before SCHAFFER, C.J.; MAXEY, DREW, LINN, STERN, PATTERSON and PARKER, JJ.

OPINION

MR. JUSTICE DREW:

The Township of Haverford, a first class township, and the Board of Township Commissioners, filed a petition for a declaratory judgment, respecting the constitutionality of the Act of June 5, 1941, P.L. 84. From a final order upholding the constitutionality of the statute and dismissing exceptions this appeal was taken.

The Act in question provided for the appointment of a police civil service commission to adopt rules and regulations for the appointment, promotion and reduction in rank, suspension and removal of paid members of the police force in boroughs, towns, and first class townships, and by its terms is only applicable to such municipalities as have three or more paid police officers.

The petitioners urged that the Act was special or class legislation in violation of Article III, Sections 7 and 34 of the Constitution ^[1] , as regulating the affairs of first class townships and boroughs upon a classification based upon the number of policemen rather than by population; that legislation regulating the affairs of municipalities must be upon a classification based upon population, and that the Act granted certain individuals special or exclusive privileges or immunities in violation of the Constitution.

The statute applies to all boroughs, incorporated towns, and townships of the first class. It is obvious that it would be absurd to set up a comprehensive civil service administration for the appointment, promotion and removal of police officers in any political subdivision having one or two, or perhaps no police officers. For this sole reason the legislature provided that the Act shall not apply to such municipalities. The enactment is in purpose and effect a general law. There is no contention that it was designed to apply to any particular locality or localities, and it is clear that this was not its purpose. It applies, or may apply, to every borough, town and first class township in the Commonwealth. If a given first class township has no police organization, or no organization justifying the system, the application of the Act is of necessity suspended. When such township acquires a sufficient organization to justify the system, the Act automatically becomes effective.

This is not classification within the meaning of the cases discussing the permissible scope of classification of governmental subdivisions in this Commonwealth. It is rather legislation affecting several well-established classes of municipalities, and applying to all members within those recognized classes if or when they have or acquire three or more police officers. The principle that the legislature may validly regulate where the need is most acute and except or exempt individual situations in which the need is not great, is well settled: Commonwealth v. Hospital, 198 Pa. 270; School District v. School District, 40 Pa.Super. 311.

In Durkin v. Kingston Coal Co., 171 Pa. 193, the Act of June 2, 1891, P.L. 176, was considered. This statute regulated anthracite coal mines but applied only to mines employing more than ten persons. This Court held the Act invalid as a violation of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. However, the exemption of mines employing less than ten persons was considered and was expressly approved. In this regard, the Court said, at page 204:

". . . It relates to all anthracite coal mines and defines what shall be regarded as such mines. Coal may be taken out of the ground by farm owners for their own use, or it may be taken in such small quantities and for such local purposes as to make the application of the mining laws to the operations so conducted not only unnecessary but burdensome to the extent of absolute prohibition. Such limited or incipient operations are not within the mischief to remedy which the mining laws were devised . . . The business of coal mining like that of insurance or banking may be defined by the legislature. The definition found in the act of 1891 seems to us reasonable, to be within the fair limits of a legislative definition, and to exclude only such operations as are too small to make the general regulations provided by the act applicable to them . . ." (Italics added).

This reasoning applies with striking force to the present Act, which excludes only municipalities in which the police forces "are too small to make the general regulations provided by the Act applicable to them."

In Commonwealth v. McDermott, 296 Pa. 299, this Court held valid the Act of May 13, 1925, P.L. 644, which required registration with the department of public welfare for the soliciting of funds for charitable purposes, and exempted certain groups such as fraternal organizations, religious organizations, colleges, labor unions, municipalities or subdivisions thereof. It was contended that the exemptions rendered this act local and special in violation of the Constitution. Mr. Justice FRAZER, speaking for the Court, said (p. 304): ". . . The right of the legislature to enact laws containing exemptions has been so long established in this and other jurisdictions that we do not deem it necessary to refer to authorities here, only repeating what this court has often said, that there must be sound reason and real necessity for the exemptions."

In Commonwealth v. Shafer, 32 Pa.Super. 497, the court upheld the Act of June 24, 1895, P.L. 232, which authorized cities and boroughs to regulate the construction of house drainage and to provide for the registration of plumbers, and which expressly excepted from its provisions boroughs having no system of water supply or system of sewerage. This case is particularly pertinent here since it applies to boroughs and contains a specific exemption.

These cases make it clear that the legislature has the right, in regulating a particular class to exclude certain members of the class to whom the Act can have no useful application. A township having one or two or no police officers would be justified in objecting strenuously to the expense and inconvenience of maintaining a complete system of police civil service which would have no function to perform. This exception in the legislation does not constitute a classification of boroughs, towns and first class townships. The Act is general in both purpose and scope. The exception is reasonable and necessary, and is based on considerations as plain as they are sound.

The instant case stands or falls on the assertion that municipalities may not be "classified" except according to their population. Article III, section 7, supplies the answer. That Section was adopted for a very simple and understandable purpose -- to put an end to the flood of privileged legislation for particular localities and for private purposes which was common in 1873. The Section said what it meant. It was aimed at laws that were in the proper sense local and special. See Commonwealth v. Gilligan, 195 Pa. 504. In 1875 the Section first came before this Court, in Wheeler v. Philadelphia, 77 Pa. 338. The legislature in 1874 had passed the first comprehensive classification law for cities, dividing them into three classes according to their population, and legislating separately for each class. Under the classification, Philadelphia was the only city of the first class, and the law was accordingly attacked as local and special. The opinion of the Court was written by Mr. Justice PAXSON. He held that the constitutional provision was not intended to prevent the legislature from meeting diverse needs; that classification was not excluded; and that the fact that Philadelphia was the only member of a class did not make the act local, since it provided for a class as such, into which other members might come. The learned judge gave specific illustration of the necessity for classified legislation by pointing out the large amount of legislation which had been passed for Philadelphia because of its status as a great port and continued (p. 350): ". . . We have but to glance at this legislation to see that the most of it is wholly unsuited to small inland cities, and that to inflict it upon them would be little short of a calamity. Must the city of Scranton, over 100 miles from tide water, with a stream hardly large enough to float a batteau, be subjected to quarantine regulations, and have its lazaretto?"

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