Wroblewski v. CommonwealthWroblewski v. Commonwealth
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Lead Opinion
OPINION
Justice CAPPY.In this appeal, we address the validity of a driver license suspension under the Driver’s License Compact (“Compact”),
On August 12, 1999, Appellant Matthew Wroblewski was convicted of the New York offense of driving while ability impaired (“DWAI”),
Appellant appealed the suspension to the trial court, which sustained the appeal. The trial court relied on the analysis set forth in Petrovich, a case involving a license suspension for a conviction under the same New York statute at issue in the instant case. In Petrovich, this Court addressed the appropriate analysis for effectuating a reciprocal suspension under Article IV of the Compact. We explained that the Compact did not call for a direct comparison of a Pennsylvania statute to the out-of-state statute. 741 A.2d at 1266. Rather, we determined that the Compact requires a two-prong test: (1) an evaluation of whether there is a Pennsylvania offense which is “of a substantially similar nature” to the provisions of
In the instant case, the trial court rejected PennDOT’s argument that Appellant’s license should be suspended pursuant to
The department shall, for purposes of imposing a suspension or revocation under Article IV of the compact, treat reports of convictions received from party states that relate to driving, operating or being in actual physical control of a vehicle while impaired by or under the influence of alcohol, intoxicating liquor, drugs, narcotics, controlled substances or other impairing or intoxicating substance as being substantially similar tosection 3731 (relating to driving under the influence of alcohol or controlled substance). The fact that the offense reported to the department by a party state may require a different degree of impairment of a person’s ability to operate, drive or control a vehicle than that required to support a conviction for a violation ofsection 3731 shall not be a basis for determining that the party state’s offense is not substantially similar tosection 3731 for purposes of Article IV of the compact.
On appeal, the Commonwealth Court reversed. The court acknowledged that Petrovich held that New York’s DWAI statute was not substantially similar to Article IV(a)(2) due to the differing degree of impairment required by the New York statute. Slip Opin. at 5-6. Nonetheless, the Commonwealth Court reasoned that Petrovich was “effectively overruled” by the enactment of
Our review in this matter, which involves pure questions of law, is plenary. Commonwealth of Penn., Dept. of Transp. v. McCafferty et al., 563 Pa. 146, 758 A.2d 1155, 1158 (2000).
Appellant argues that the Commonwealth Court erred in relying on
Appellee counters that
We agree with Appellee’s position. Article IV(c) of the Compact granted the legislature the ability to define which out-of-state offenses Pennsylvania considers to be substantially similar to offenses delineated under Article IV(a). Specifically, Article IY(c) states in pertinent part that “the laws of such party state shall contain such provisions as may be necessary to ensure that full force and effect is given to this article.”
The General Assembly took advantage of this grant of authority by passing
Additionally, Article 1(b)(1) states that the policy of each party state is to “[p‘Jromote compliance with the laws, ordinances and administrative rules and regulations relating to the operation of motor vehicles by their operators in each of the juiisdictions where such operators drive motor vehicles.” We think it evident that in enacting
Accordingly, we hold that prior to the effective date of
We turn to whether the Commonwealth Court properly ordered the suspension of Appellant’s license under
Appellant also argues that
The order of the Commonwealth Court is affirmed.
Notes
. That statute provides in pertinent part as follows: “No person shall operate a motor vehicle while the person’s ability to operate such motor vehicle is impaired by the consumption of alcohol.”
. Article IV provides in relevant part:
(a) The licensing authority in the home state, for the purposes of suspension, revocation or limitation of the license to operate a motor vehicle, shall give the same effect to the conduct reported, pursuant to Article III of this compact, as it would if such conduct had occurred in the home state in the case of convictions for:
(2) driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor or a narcotic drug or under the influence of any other drug to a degree which renders the driver incapable of safely driving a motor vehicle;
(c) If the laws of a party state do not provide for offenses or violations denominated or described in precisely the words employed in subdivision (a) of this article, such party state shall construe the denominations and descriptions appearing in subdivision (a) of this article as being applicable to and identifying those offenses or violations of a substantially similar nature and the laws of such party state shall contain such provisions as may be necessary to ensure that full force and effect is given to this article.
. In Petrovich, PennDOT invited the court to rely on
. The trial court also found that the New York authorities failed to comply with the reporting requirements of the Compact, thereby precluding PennDOT from sufficiently evaluating Appellant’s conduct. That issue is not before us in this appeal.
. As Appellant has failed to develop this argument, this court in no way opines on whether the Driver’s License Compact required the consent of Congress, and if so, whether
. Mr. Chief Justice Zappala erroneously states that we have deemed this issue to be “waived”. Dissenting Slip Opin. at 3. In fact, we have determined that the issue was not sufficiently developed to establish a non-conslitutional basis upon which to declare the legislature’s amendment,
Dissenting Opinion
DISSENTING OPINION
Chief Justice ZAPPALA.I dissent on two independent grounds. First, the Legislature’s passage of
The Driver’s License Compact is a contractual agreement between thirty-nine states, including Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, each of which has enacted the Driver’s License Compact into law by statute. Sullivan v. Commonwealth, Dep’t of Transp., Bureau of Driver Licensing, 550 Pa. 639, 708 A.2d 481, 482 n. 2 (1998). The forty party jurisdictions entered into this interstate contractual agreement with the intention of promoting compliance with each party jurisdiction’s driving laws and regulations. Id. at 482.
Generally, the authority for states to enter into interstate contractual agreements arises from the Compact Clause of the United States Constitution, which states:
No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with anotherState, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.
Ú.S. Const, art. I, § 10, cl. 3. Congress provides its consent to compacts by a statute or a joint resolution, which will usually include the compact’s terms. Note, Charting No Man’s Land: Applying Jurisdictional and Choice of Law Doctrines to Interstate Compacts, 11 Harv. L.Rev.1991, 1993 (1998). The terms of an interstate compact ordinarily contain the substantive obligations of the party states, provisions for enactment and amendment and procedures for termination or withdrawal. Id. As is the case with all contracts, the Contract Clause of the United States Constitution protects compacts from impairment by the states. See
Additionally, a state may not unilaterally amend, nullify or revoke a compact it has entered into if the compact does not so provide. Id.; see also West Virginia ex rel. Dyer v. Sims, 341 U.S. 22, 28, 71 S.Ct. 557, 95 L.Ed. 713 (1951); Hinderlider v. La Plata River, 304 U.S. 92, 106, 58 S.Ct. 803, 82 L.Ed. 1202 (1938); Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 657, 725, 9 L.Ed. 1233 (1838).
Read literally, the Compact Clause requires states to obtain the consent of Congress for any agreement between states. However, the United States Supreme Court has held that the Compact Clause only requires congressional consent for an interstate compact that “may tend to increase and build up the political influence of the contracting States, so as to encroach upon or impair the supremacy of the United States or interfere with their rightful management of particular subjects placed under their entire control.” United States Steel Corp.
The Driver’s License Compact was not enacted with the consent of Congress. However, in Koterba v. Commonwealth, Dep’t of Transp., Bureau of Driver Licensing, 736 A.2d 761 (Pa.Cmwlth.1999), alloc, denied, 561 Pa. 703, 751 A.2d 195(Pa.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 816, 121 S.Ct. 53, 148 L.Ed.2d 21 (2000), the Commonwealth Court held that the Driver’s License Compact is not the sort of interstate agreement for which the Compact Clause mandates congressional consent. The Commonwealth Court reasoned that, “[n]either the sharing of information among states regarding serious motor vehicle offense convictions nor the regulation by each individual state of the driving privileges of its own citizens threatens the supremacy of the United States.” Koterba, 736 A.2d at 765.
Appellant claims that the Legislature’s passage of
Appellant recognizes that courts have acknowledged that unilateral amendments of compacts that have been ratified by Congress may violate [the Compact Clause]; Henderson v. Delaware Joint Toll Bridge Comm’n, 362 Pa. 475, 66 A.2d 848 (1949), cert. denied, 338 U.S. 850, 70 S.Ct. 94, 94 L.Ed. 520 (1949). Appellant believes, however, that the Driver’s License Compact is not reviewable under the United States Constitution because it did not receive the consent of Congress. Appellant seems to be of the opinion that there is some extra-constitutional basis on which we could find that there was an impermissible unilateral amendment. He fails however to develop this claim in any meaningful way.
Majority op. at 8 (emphasis added). However, the text of Appellant’s brief does not support the majority’s assertion of waiver. Appellant does not “believe” that the Driver’s License Compact is not reviewable under the United States Constitution, rather, Appellant
understands that the Driver’s License Compact did not receive the consent of Congress and may therefore not be reviewable under Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution. However, the analysis is similar. As in Henderson and in Aveline [v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, 729 A.2d 1254 (Pa.Cmwlth.1999),] the Compact was a contract entered into between a number of states. The basic premise was to treat offending conduct in the reporting state as it would have been treated in the home state. The Compact permits withdrawal after six months notice.... It does not permit unilateral modifications of the Compact ....
Brief for Appellant at 15 (emphasis added). I read Appellant’s argument as asserting that regardless of whether the Driver’s License Compact is controlled by the Compact Clause, the Legislature’s passage of
In Henderson, this Court contemplated the mechanism for amendment of an interstate compact entered into by Pennsylvania and New Jersey with the consent of Congress. We stated that, “an amendment ... would be a matter for the contracting States subject, of course, to the congressional consent required by Article 1, Section 10, cl. 3, of the United States Constitution .... ” Henderson, 66 A.2d at 848. While Henderson is distinguishable from this case because the compact there required congressional consent, I do not read Henderson as standing for the proposition that an amendment to an interstate compact only requires consent of the party states where the compact at issue is controlled by the Compact Clause. The fact that an interstate compact is not controlled by the Compact Clause merely obviates the requirement of consent by Congress to an amendment. It does not obviate the requirement of consent by the party states to an amendment.
Likewise, the fact that the Driver’s License Compact is not controlled by the Compact Clause merely obviates the require
Furthermore, in its essence, the Driver’s License Compact is simply a contract between the forty party jurisdictions that have enacted the Driver’s License Compact into law. See Sullivan, 708 A.2d at 484 (stating that the “[Driver’s License] Compact is a contract between states.”). I cannot discern any tenet of contract law which permits the unilateral modification of a contract by one of the contracting parties in the absence of specific language in the contract authorizing unilateral modification. While the Driver’s License Compact explicitly contemplates and authorizes a mechanism for withdrawal, see
Accordingly, I would hold that the Legislature’s passage of
Even assuming arguendo that it was within the Legislature’s authority to unilaterally amend the Driver’s License Compact with the passage of
In Petrovich, this Court examined the language of Article IV of the Driver’s License Compact and held that Article IV
does not call for a direct comparison of Pennsylvania’s statute to the out-of-state statute. Rather, the Compactrequires a two-pronged test. First, we must evaluate whether there is a Pennsylvania offense which is “of a substantially similar nature” to the provisions of Article IV(a)(2). Second, we must evaluate whether there is a [out-of-state] offense which is “of a substantially similar nature” to Article IV(a)(2). Both prongs must be satisfied before PennDOT can sanction a Pennsylvania citizen for an out-of-state conviction.
741 A.2d at 1266-67; see also
Despite this unanimous holding, and directly contrary to such, the majority reasons that the Legislature’s passage of
shall, for purposes of imposing a suspension or revocation under Article IV of the compact, treat reports of convictions received from party states ... as being substantially similar to [75 Pa.C.S. § ] 3731 (relating to driving under the influence of alcohol or controlled substance). The fact that the offense reported to the department by a party state may require a different degree of impairment ... than that required to support a conviction for a violation ofsection 3731 shall not be a basis for determining that the party state’s offense is not substantially similar tosection 3731 for the purposes of Article IV of the compact.
If the language of Article IV required a direct comparison of Pennsylvania’s DUI statute,
The majority asserts that
I therefore respectfully dissent.
. “Mention of one thing implies exclusion of another. When certain persons or things are specified in a law, contract, or will, an intention to exclude all others from its operation may be inferred.” Black‘s Law Dictionary 581 (6th ed. 1991).
Dissenting Opinion
DISSENTING OPINION
Justice N1GRO.As I agree with Chief Justice Zappala that