Supreme Court Of PA Reaffirms The Broad Scope Of The Commonwealth Court’s Declaratory Judgment Jurisdiction In Challenges To Agency Interpretations Of Statutes

Many Pennsylvania lawyers only encounter the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in its appellate guise, but the court enjoys an unusual hybrid nature, having both appellate and original jurisdiction. The court's original jurisdiction encompasses cases in which the state government is a party, though such cases can also arrive at the court as appeals from state agency decisions. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recently issued a significant decision in a case that touched on both kinds of jurisdiction and, in doing so, it broadly interpreted the Commonwealth Court's original jurisdiction to hear cases under the Declaratory Judgments Act, 42 Pa. C.S. §§ 7531-7541, when litigants seek to challenge a state agency's interpretation of a statute.

The Recent Decision

In Commonwealth, Office of the Governor v. Donohue, No. 10 MAP 2013 (Aug. 18, 2014), the Supreme Court rejected the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records' interpretation of the time frame in the Right-to-Know Law for an agency to respond to written requests for documents. Although the statute provided that the time for responding to a request "shall not exceed five business days from the date the written request is received by the open-records officer for an agency," the OOR had interpreted the statute to require a response within five business days of when any employee of an agency received the written request.

The case originated with a citizen's challenge to the response by the Office of the Governor to his right-to-know request. Although the OOR upheld the Office of the Governor's denial of the request, it rejected the Office's interpretation of the time required to respond under the statute. The Office of the Governor appealed that ruling to the Commonwealth Court, which dismissed the appeal on the ground that the Office was not aggrieved by the OOR's ruling because the OOR ultimately agreed with the Office regarding its rejection of the right-to-know request — even though the OOR disagreed on the interpretation of the five-day requirement.

Hedging its jurisdictional bets, the Office of the Governor also filed a declaratory judgment action in the Commonwealth Court under that court's original jurisdiction. In that action, the OOR argued that a declaratory judgment was not a proper vehicle for the challenge, but the Commonwealth Court rejected this argument, as well as the OOR's interpretation of the five-day requirement in the statute.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, the OOR...