by Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-33)
Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Department of Health (DOH) is creating regulations that would expand its authority to wield the same power Gov. Tom Wolf did in 2020-21. These regulations threaten to give the governor sweeping emergency power Pennsylvania voters acted to limit in 2021. If the governor can simply move that power into the DOH and exercise it through regulation, then the constitutional protection adopted by the people means little.
Pennsylvanians remember why they changed their constitution. In 2020, Gov. Wolf used extraordinary emergency powers to control the commonwealth. Department of Health Sec. Levine drove the administration’s public-health response, while Shapiro backed Wolf and Levine’s policies as Pennsylvania’s attorney general. Today, Shapiro is governor, and his DOH is seeking expanded regulatory authority. We cannot separate what is happening now from what Pennsylvanians experienced then.
Pennsylvanians remember this because we lived it. Government shut down schools and sent children home. Students lost proms, graduations, sports seasons and milestones they never got back. Parents struggled to work while their children sat at kitchen tables staring into computer screens instead of sitting in classrooms.
Government decided which businesses were essential and which were non-essential, then ordered those it deemed non-essential to close. Men and women who had spent decades building a family business, supporting their families and employing their neighbors suddenly had government tell them their livelihood was “non-essential.” Revenue stopped, but mortgages, rent, utilities, insurance and bills did not. Employees lost paychecks and jobs. Independent business owners watched everything they had spent their lives building hang in the balance.
Truckers tried to keep Pennsylvania moving, but closures and restrictions made it hard for them to find food, restrooms, places to rest and safe places to park. Churches faced pressure to cancel worship. Pennsylvanians endured battles over mask and vaccination mandates, and personal medical decisions that raised fundamental questions about bodily autonomy, religious liberty and how far government should be allowed to reach into our lives.
Perhaps nothing was more painful than what happened to our elderly and vulnerable. Families were separated from parents and grandparents in nursing homes and long-term-care facilities. Husbands and wives were separated. Children stood outside windows trying to see their parents. Some Pennsylvanians died without their families beside them, while sons and daughters were denied the chance to hold a parent’s hand, pray at the bedside or say goodbye. COVID-19 also devastated Pennsylvania’s veterans’ homes. Veterans who had sacrificed for our nation became sick and died while serious questions mounted about management and oversight.
These were not statistics on a government spreadsheet. They were our mothers and fathers, grandparents, veterans, children, workers, neighbors and small-business owners. Government decisions reached directly into our classrooms, churches, nursing homes, businesses and homes.
Then the people got their say. In 2021, Pennsylvania voters changed our constitution to limit a governor’s disaster emergency declaration to 21 days unless the General Assembly acts to extend it. Three weeks. After that, the people’s elected representatives have a constitutional role.
That was not a recommendation. It was not an opinion poll. It was not a request that future governors could choose to honor or ignore. The people amended their constitution. That is the law. That brings us directly back to Gov. Shapiro and the DOH.
If DOH can invoke broad disease-control authority and issue sweeping orders beyond three weeks without the General Assembly, then we face an obvious question: Has the governor found a way to ignore the voice of the people?
Gov. Shapiro cannot play a shell game with the constitution. Moving authority from the governor’s desk to the DOH does not make the constitution disappear. Calling government action a “regulation,” or “control measure” rather than an “emergency declaration” does not change what that power actually does or how it affects the people subjected to it.
The DOH is not a fourth branch of government. It is an executive agency. Its authority comes from law, and it is bound by the Pennsylvania Constitution. An administrative agency cannot use regulations to rewrite the constitution, give itself authority the legislature never granted or provide the governor with a back door around constitutional restrictions on executive power.
Shapiro knows this history firsthand. He served as attorney general throughout the Wolf administration’s COVID-19 response and backed Wolf and Levine’s policies. Now he sits in the governor’s office, and his DOH seeks expanded regulatory authority. His administration should answer some very simple questions: Where does this power come from? What limits it? How long can it last? Where is the General Assembly? And how does it respect the constitutional change the people demanded in 2021?
I did not watch the fight over emergency powers from the sidelines. I was a leader in that fight, and I remember the Pennsylvanians who reached out to us. I remember business owners who were shut down, workers who lost their paychecks, parents whose children could not go to school and families who could not visit their parents and grandparents. I remember their anger, frustration, fear and heartbreak.
For those Pennsylvanians, changing the constitution was not an academic legal exercise or a political argument inside the State Capitol. It came directly from what they had lived through.
This is bigger than Wolf, Shapiro or any political party. The same constitutional limits must bind a Republican governor and a Democratic governor. We do not limit governmental power because we distrust one politician. We limit governmental power because no governor and no administration should stand above the constitution.
Pennsylvanians remember the closed businesses and lost jobs. They remember empty classrooms, canceled proms, graduations and lost sports seasons. They remember parents and grandparents behind nursing-home windows. They remember our veterans homes. They remember churches struggling to gather, truckers struggling to find places to stop and workers confronting government mandates involving their livelihoods and their own bodies.
The people remember because they lived it.
And then the people voted.
We the people by a majority vote changed our constitution because they had seen what prolonged unilateral emergency power could do. They demanded a check on that power and placed that check in the fundamental law of this commonwealth. Government does not get to erase their decision because it finds the people’s answer inconvenient.
The Pennsylvania Constitution is not a bureaucratic obstacle for Shapiro — or any governor — to maneuver around. It is the fundamental law of this commonwealth. The governor is bound by it. His DOH is bound by it. Every executive agency is bound by it.
The people lived through the emergency. They saw their schools closed, their businesses shuttered, their livelihoods threatened, their loved ones isolated and their freedoms restricted. They demanded a change. They voted. They changed their constitution.
Gov. Shapiro does not get to push the people’s voices aside by using an executive agency to recreate the prolonged emergency authority they acted to limit.
The people changed the law. Their government must obey it.
