Pennsylvania Supreme Court: Petition for Review in the Nature of a Complaint in Equity With Notice to Plead

Plaintiffs are individuals and a non-profit social service provider that have suffered and will continue to suffer irreparable harm as a result of certain provisions of The Older Adult Protective Services Act (Act 169 of 1996 and Act 13 of 1997, codified in relevant part at 35 P.S. 10225.501 through 10225.508) (hereafter "OAPSA" or the "Act"), which prohibits nursing homes, home health care programs, residential mental health and mental retardation facilities, and other health care facilities from employing any individual who was convicted of any one of a broad range of enumerated misdemeanors and felonies at any time in his or her life. The overbroad scope of OAPSA prohibits the individual plaintiffs in this action, who are fully qualified for employment in covered health care facilities, from pursuing their lawful occupation, and arbitrarily interferes with the informed professional judgment of the non-profit provider plaintiff on how best to staff and administer its facilities. The Act violates the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by unreasonably, arbitrarily and irrebuttably presuming the individual plaintiffs to be unqualified to pursue lawful employment and unreasonably and arbitrarily interfering with the opportunity of plaintiff Resources for Human Development to hire employees who best and most safely serve its clients.