PA Supreme Court Strengthens Environmental Rights – A Historic Win for Pennsylvania’s Air, Water, Land, and Health

 

Pennsylvanians can breathe a breath of fresh air today thanks to a monumental decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court striking down unconstitutional laws and protecting the environment.  The Supreme Court strengthened our rights “to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment,” which have been enshrined in the Pennsylvania Constitution since an overwhelming vote for the “Environmental Rights Amendment” in 1971.  

Shortly after voters amended the Constitution, a decision by an appeals court, called Payne v. Kassab, effectively nullified the Environmental Rights Amendment.  Until Tuesday, the Payne decision was the law of the land.  In 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Robinson Township et al. v. Commonwealth first re-opened the Environmental Rights Amendment, with a plurality decision casting doubt on Payne and striking down portions of Act 13, which would have allowed oil and gas drilling in any area of any municipality in Pennsylvania.  Later appellate court decisions continued to follow Payne, however, despite Robinson Township.

The majority opinion of the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation v. Commonwealth struck down state laws that were siphoning royalties from gas leasing on state lands out of a fund for the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and into the general fund to be used for balancing the budget.  The Supreme Court rejected the Payne decision as an appropriate way of looking at the Environmental Rights Amendment, completing the work begun under Robinson Township.  The Supreme Court wrote, “[t]he Payne I test, which is unrelated to the text of [the Environmental Rights Amendment] and the trust principles animating it, strips the constitutional provision of its meaning.”

Instead, the Supreme Court looked at the plain language of the Environmental Rights Amendment and saw that it placed a duty on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and each state agency and local government to conserve Pennsylvania’s natural resources, as a trustee preserves a trust for the beneficiaries of the trust.  As a trustee, the Commonwealth cannot take Pennsylvania’s natural resources and move them out of the trust.  In this case, it cannot take royalties from gas leasing that had been held in a fund for conservation of the environment and use them for purposes unrelated to the conservation of the environment, since the gas on state lands is clearly part of our natural resources.

The Supreme Court’s PEDF decision is groundbreaking.  Until now, many state agencies and governments–to the extent they even knew that Pennsylvania had an Environmental Rights Amendment–argued that the Environmental Rights Amendment did not impose any duties on them they did not already have.  In other words, that it meant nothing.  Now, the law is clear:

 “Pennsylvania’s environmental trust thus imposes two basic duties on the Commonwealth as the trustee. First, the Commonwealth has a duty to prohibit the degradation, diminution, and depletion of our public natural resources, whether these harms might result from direct state action or from the actions of private parties. … Second, the Commonwealth must act affirmatively via legislative action to protect the environment.”

Even more, the declaration of people’s rights to “clean air and pure water, and to the preservation of natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment” “places a limitation on the state’s power to act contrary to this right, and while the subject of this right may be amenable to regulation, any laws that unreasonably impair the right are unconstitutional.”

This decision is welcome news to all Pennsylvanians who, like Clean Air Council, cherish and work to protect our environment.