Statement on Wolf v General Assembly Ruling

The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania is disappointed by the Commonwealth Court’s ruling that the case Wolf v General Assembly of Pennsylvania is not “ripe for court intervention.” In their opinion, the court said that Governor Wolf needed to wait until SB 106 had been passed a second time and presented to voters. We disagree.

We participated in the Governor’s challenge of SB 106 as Friends of the Court, joined by two 19-year-old Pennsylvanians whose fundamental right to vote was threatened by SB 106. We reaffirm our earlier statements - SB 106 is unconstitutional in both form and substance.

The General Assembly bundled multiple constitutional amendments in a single resolution, SB 106, and put all of them up together for a single “yea” or “nay” vote. This fails to comply with Article XI, § 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, and made it so voters could not know where their representatives stood on each individual amendment - information the Pennsylvania Constitution considers important for informed voters - when they voted in the November 2022 elections earlier that week.

On top of this, of the amendments included in SB 106, at least two of them were unconstitutional. One amendment would have raised the minimum voting age to 21 years, even though the 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says that states cannot increase the voting age beyond 18 years. Another amendment would limit the right to vote with a 90-day residency requirement, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that residency requirements greater than 30 days violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Importantly, these sections of SB 106 can confuse voters, interfering with their right to vote. Both of the unconstitutional restrictions on voting have been published, as is required by Article XI of the state constitution. They have been reported on by newspapers across the state, caused confusion among voters, and threaten to discourage citizens from exercising their right to vote in the future. For these reasons, the passage of SB 106 warranted judicial intervention at the time it was challenged.

The League of Women Voters continues to believe that the PA Constitution should be used to grant rights, not take them away. We will continue to oppose efforts by the PA legislature to use the Constitution as a way to ram through partisan agenda items like abortion restrictions, stricter voter ID requirements, limits on the Governor’s authority, and more.