Your Voice in Harrisburg

The PBA’s Legislative Advocacy is a Valuable Member-Benefit and Critical to the Legal Profession

By Anna Malcein King, Esquire

PBA membership has many benefits, but in our humble opinion, one of the most valuable is the representation of your interests before the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Now and then, we like to make sure our members understand the advocacy work that we do, what makes it possible, and why it’s so important. We also strive to keep you updated on what we’ve been up to on your behalf, and the beginning of a new legislative session is a perfect time to do both, with a look back over the last two years and ahead to the next two.

Among the PBA assets are a friendly and hardworking Legislative Department and a PAC, which - in consultation with the PAC Board - the legislative team puts to judicious use. The first thing to understand about PACs is that everyone has one, from the bankers to the farmers. In terms of size (i.e. wealth), many of them dwarf PBAs; we have what you might call a “relationship PAC,” rather than an “influence PAC.” We use PAC funds to attend events and make contributions that allow us to mix and mingle with elected representatives and legislative staff. These are all opportunities to get to know the people who make policy and to make sure they think of us as a resource for legal expertise and consultation. Without the PAC, and the relationships it allows us to develop, we simply could not be effective in advocating for our positions.

Every session brings its unique opportunities and challenges. One challenge we’ll be facing this session is an historic turnover.

More than 25 percent of the members are new, which means we have a lot of people to get to know!

Two years ago, at the beginning of the 2021-22 session, the first challenges came in the form of legislation in both chambers that PBA opposes. In the Senate, “Kayden’s Law,” a wellintentioned child custody bill, was reintroduced for the third straight session and was promptly reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We worked in close consultation with our Family Law Section and with Senators Santarsiero (D) and Baker (R) to negotiate an amendment that would allow us to support the bill.

While we sought to persuade and compromise in the Senate, we also communicated our concerns in the House. This helped to ensure, when the bill was referred to the House Judiciary Committee in a form we ultimately could not support, that it proceeded no further. While the lack of support in the House meant the bill failed last session, we know that’s not the end of this story. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter and dedication of the prime sponsors, the bill will almost certainly be back this session. We are optimistically continuing to work in good faith with our friends in the Senate on the language.

While the Senate was reintroducing Kayden’s Law, the House started out last session by reintroducing a proposed constitutional amendment establishing judicial districts for the appellate courts. The proposed amendment had passed both chambers in the previous session, which meant that it would be on the ballot as a referendum if it passed again in the 2021-22 session. Ultimately, the measure never received consideration beyond the House Judiciary Committee, which means it is effectively dead. That’s good news for PBA, which formally adopted a position in opposition to the initiative in March of 2020.

While the judicial districts joint resolution posed the most immediate threat, it was far from the only problematic proposed constitutional amendment last session. In fact, “messing with the judiciary” seemed to be a popular theme in the House. Other proposed constitutional amendments included one that would have allowed the legislature to usurp the Supreme Court’s authority to govern the conduct of courts, practice and procedure, and rules for admission to the bar and to practice law; another that would have imposed a two-term limit on justices of the Supreme Court and judges of the appellate courts; and another that would have eliminated retention elections. PBA opposed each of these proposed amendments and none received consideration beyond the House Judiciary Committee.

While playing defense in both chambers, we were also pursuing our own initiatives, which ultimately became our two big wins of the legislative session. One was a 263-page bill – the stellar work of our Business Law Section – that modernized Pennsylvania’s Corporations Law by incorporating modern practices and relevant judicial precedent. The other amended the Criminal History Record Information Act to make law enforcement’s investigatory information available to litigants in related civil suits. The idea for that initiative came from a member of our Civil Litigation Section, who saw a problem in the law and pursued a Report and Recommendation. PBA adopted the R&R and the Legislative Department had its marching orders. The roads to victory for these bills were rocky at times and less direct than we would have preferred, but ultimately, both made it over the hill in the final voting hours of legislative session.

One of our primary jobs on the Hill is to keep an eye out for bills that would negatively affect the practice of law. To be fair to our legislators, the negative affect is usually inadvertent, but that only means we have to be more alert. One example from this session was a bill that would have substantially reformed the Right to Know Law. The purpose of the legislation was to address abuses of the statute, as well as the financial and personnel strain compliance places on local governments. Of interest to PBA was a provision subjecting requests made for a “commercial purpose” to additional fees. We were concerned that, as defined,

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