Appellant was a Republican committeeperson of Appellee, the Bucks County Republican Committee, for the voting district of Yardley Borough. He was first elected to a two-year term in 2014, and he was reelected on April 26, 2016. This election was conducted in conjunction with the 2016 public primaries, albeit that it served as the sole and dispositive election for committeepersons.

Appellee is an unincorporated association and a political party as defined by Section 801 of the Pennsylvania Election Code. See 25 P.S. § 2831(b). The Rules of the Republican Party in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (the "Committee Rules"), which serve as the organization's bylaws, provide that the County Committee is composed of one committeeman and one committeewoman from each election district in Bucks County, who are elected by Republican electors at the Primary Election in even numbered years. See Committee Rules, Rule I, art. 1 § A; id. Rule II, art. 2; accord 25 P.S. § 2837 ("There shall be in each county a county committee for each political party within such county, the members of which shall be elected at the spring primary, or appointed, as the rules of the respective parties within the county provide.").

After the election, the acting chairman of Appellee's Ethics Committee sent a letter to Appellant advising him that complaints had been lodged by Bryan McNamara and Nicholas and Sandra Liberato. Complaint dated June 7, 2016, in Mohn v. Bucks Cty. Republican Comm. , No. 2016-03560 (C.P. Bucks) ("Complaint"), at Ex. D. Mr. McNamara alleged, among other things, that Appellant had "actively campaigned against an endorsed candidate for committeeman and disparaged the importance and value of the Bucks County Republican Committee Sample Ballot." Id. at Ex. I. The letter containing the Liberatos’ complaint specifically averred that:

A [political action committee] controlled by Dan Mohn [and another individual] paid for and sent mailers in support of [an opponent] labeling my wife and I as

Liberals, Rhinos[, i.e. , Republicans in name only], and a "Union member who pays non-mandatory dues that expand Union Power." They even inferred that I am supportive of Planned Parenthood .... These are outrageous lies.

Id. at Ex. K. Both complaint letters asserted that Appellant had violated the Code of Ethics contained in Rule VII of the Committee Rules. In his correspondence to Appellant, the acting chairman also related that an investigatory hearing had been scheduled before the Ethics Committee, at which Appellant would be free to present testimony from witnesses and other evidence.

Appellant's counsel responded with requests for documents and information. He also asked for a continuance of at least 30 days, while indicating that the alleged conduct didn't appear to violate any known bylaw or rule of the local committee. Additionally, counsel alluded to Bentman v. Seventh Ward Democratic Executive Committee , 421 Pa. 188, 218 A.2d 261 (1966), insofar as the decision reflects that "[m]embership on [a local party's] committee, a status now legally recognized, is an important right and privilege not only to the person elected but also to the voters who elected such person to act as their representatives on the committee." Id. at Ex. G (quoting Bentman , 421 Pa. at 199, 218 A.2d at 267 ).

A short continuance was granted, and Appellant was notified. In response, his counsel took the position that the Code of Ethics reposited in the Committee Rules applied solely to elected and appointed public officials, not party officials. See Complaint dated June 7, 2016, in Mohn v. Bucks Cty. Republican Comm. , No. 2016-03560, at Ex. L. As such, counsel opined that the Ethics Committee lacked the authority to conduct any proceedings and asserted that the hearing should be cancelled. In the alternative, counsel reiterated his request for a longer continuance and complained that he hadn't been provided with requested documents. The hearing before the Ethics Committee apparently proceeded nevertheless, and the committee apparently submitted a report and recommendation to the Executive Committee.

In the record presented, the details of the proceedings before the Ethics Committee are somewhat vague.

On June 7, 2016, Appellant and two other individuals filed a complaint in the court of common pleas seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent their removal as committeepersons, as well as an award of attorneys’ fees as a sanction for purported bad faith. The plaintiffs also filed a separate emergency motion asking the court to enjoin the conduct of any hearing before the Executive Committee.

The two other individuals subsequently discontinued their participation.

In the complaint, Appellant reiterated his position that the Ethics Code applies only to public officials and not to party officials. He recognized that Rule I, Article 3 of the Committee Rules separately authorizes Appellee's Executive Committee to disqualify an office holder (including a committeeperson) who: is not a qualified Republican elector; has supported a candidate for election in opposition to any nominee of the Republican Party in a general election; or is neglecting or refusing to attend to the duties of his or her office. See Complaint at ¶14. He stressed, however, that, under these provisions, the officer holder "shall be given an opportunity for a full hearing before the Executive Committee after due notice of the nature of the charges, the time and place of the hearing, and his or her entitlement generally to the elements of due process in the conduct of such proceedings." Committee Rules, Rule I, art. 3. He further developed, inter alia , that only violations of the Rule VII Code of Ethics had been alleged.

The complaint also referenced Bentman in support of Appellant's position that Appellee was required both to comply with its own rules and to afford due process "as embodied in the Constitution of the United States." Complaint at ¶15 (citing Bentman , 421 Pa. at 199, 218 A.2d at 267 ). Further, Appellant highlighted that, in addition to his intra-party duties, he had important public duties, including nominating candidates for special election for vacancies in local offices. Id. at ¶92. In terms of the jurisdiction of the common pleas court, Appellant noted that this Court had explained, "[d]eprivation of [committee] membership and concomitant right of participation in the selection of public officers bears a [d]irect and [s]ubstantial relationship to the electoral processes as to be a matter of judicial concern." Id. (quoting Bentman , 421 Pa. at 203, 218 A.2d at 269 ).

The Committee Rules provide that "[i]n case of a vacancy on any ticket of any political sub-division or district thereof, the members of the County Committee of the unit affected shall nominate a candidate to fill said vacancy and transmit their action in writing, signed by them, to the County Chairman who, with the Secretary shall certify the action to the County Board of Electors." Committee Rules, Rule VIII, art. 1 § B. Appellee's duty to nominate candidates in special-election scenarios is imposed by the Pennsylvania Election Code. See 25 P.S. § 2780 ("Each political party shall be entitled to nominate and to file nomination certificates for as many candidates as will be voted for at such special election.").

Finally, the complaint referenced the provision of Section 807 of the Election Code to the effect that a county committee "may make such rules for the government of the party in the county, not inconsistent with law or with the State rules of the party, as it may deem expedient[.]" 25 P.S. § 2837. According to Appellant, when Appellee allegedly violated its own rules, it concomitantly offended this provision, since "the Committee may only act consistent with its own rules under 25 P.S. § 2837." Complaint at ¶95.

Consideration of the matter by the Executive Committee was deferred pending a hearing before the county court on Appellant's emergency motion for injunctive relief. After the court set a hearing date, Appellee scheduled a hearing before the Executive Committee and gave notice to Appellant. The correspondence indicated that the proceedings were pursuant to the disqualification provisions of Rule 1, Article 3 of the Committee Rules. See Bucks Cty. Republican Comm., Exec. Comm. Hearing, N.T., Aug. 11, 2016, at 21, Ex. HQ 3.

Appellant's counsel responded with a letter objecting to the hearing on the basis of the matters set forth in the complaint filed in the county court. Counsel also posited: "[It] appears the disqualification hearing has been scheduled for some improper purpose, possibly as an attempt to harass and embarrass Mr. Mohn, or as an attempt to intimidate or control Mr. Mohn's conduct." Id. at 16, Ex. HQ 1.

The common pleas court denied relief on the emergency injunction and the hearing before the Executive Committee ensued. Neither Appellant nor his counsel appeared, but a hearing master read into the record the contents of counsel's most recent correspondence advancing Appellant's objections. The hearing master proceeded to introduce a "Committeepeople Resolution," which had been signed and accepted by Appellant, indicating, inter alia , that he would "help endorsed Republicans running for office in accordance with the Bucks County Republican Committee bylaws," and "cover polls on election day, distribute the sample ballot." Id. at 19, Ex. HQ 2.

An attorney representing the complainants invoking the Ethics Code was then permitted to present testimony and evidence. Consistent with his complaint letter, Nicholas Liberato explained that, during his campaign for reelection as local committeeperson, he become aware that Appellant was circulating flyers printed through a political action committee of which Appellant was the treasurer. See id. at 31. According to Mr. Liberato, the flyers falsely accused him of working against conservative values; working to expand union power; acting as a Republican in name only; and altering the sample ballot to include trial lawyers, union members, and a former Planned Parenthood executive. Id. at 27-29. Mr. Liberato also noted that the flyer contained Appellant's personal return address. On Election Day, Mr. Liberato attested, he had learned that Appellant was in his (the witness's) election district distributing sample ballots prepared by the political action committee in support of the opposing candidate. It was Mr. Liberato's position that Appellant had no reason to be at his (again, the witness's) polling station on the day of the primary, and that Appellant should have been at his own polling station in Yardley Borough. See id. at 33. Mr. Liberato indicated that, although he was the endorsed candidate, he lost the election by two votes. See id. at 36-37.

There were conflicting assertions about whether the party endorses committeepersons. Compare Exec. Comm. Hearing, N.T., Aug. 11, 2016, at 36, with id. at 60.

Bryan McNamara similarly testified that he had learned of flyers opposing his own candidacy distributed by Appellant, and that Appellant appeared at his (the witness's) polling station on the afternoon of Election Day distributing sample ballots in support of the opposing candidate. See id. at 47-54.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the Executive Committee voted to disqualify Appellant as a committeeperson and declare his office vacant. See id. at 86. Appellee's chairman later accepted the Executive Committee's recommendation to this effect and issued the declaration.

Appellant and Appellee proceeded to file cross-motions for summary judgment in the litigation before the common pleas court. The gravamen of Appellee's position -- which was credited by the county court -- was that the matter was a purely intra-party dispute with no direct or substantial relationship to any state interest. As such, Appellee successfully asserted that its right to political association under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution prohibited the court from assuming jurisdiction. Bucks County Republican Committee's Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment in Mohn , No. 2016-03560, at ¶2. See generally Democratic Party of the U.S. v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette , 450 U.S. 107, 126, 101 S. Ct. 1010, 1019, 67 L.Ed.2d 82 (1981) ("This First Amendment freedom to gather in association for the purpose of advancing shared beliefs is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment from infringement by any State[,]" and "the freedom to associate for the ‘common advancement of political beliefs,’ necessarily presupposes the freedom to identify the people who constitute the association, and to limit the association to those people only" (quoting Kusper v. Pontikes , 414 U.S. 51, 56, 94 S. Ct. 303, 307, 38 L.Ed.2d 260 (1973) ); Cousins v. Wigoda , 419 U.S. 477, 487, 95 S. Ct. 541, 547, 42 L.Ed.2d 595 (1975) ("The National Democratic Party and its adherents enjoy a constitutionally protected right of political association."). The Commonwealth Court affirmed in a divided, non-precedential opinion. See Mohn v. Bucks Cty. Republican Comm ., 24 C.D. 2018, slip op. , 2020 WL 1079247 (Pa. Cmwlth. Mar. 6, 2020). Consistent with Appellee's position, the majority opinion stressed Appellee's associational rights and distinguished Bentman on the basis that "[Appellant's] removal from office is in no way related to [Appellee's] present selection of party nominees for public office." Id. at *7 (emphasis added). According to the dissent, however, such a narrow reading of Bentman "renders its analysis superfluous." Id. at *11 (McCullough, J., dissenting).

Appeal was allowed to consider whether the county court had jurisdiction under Bentman . See Mohn v. Bucks Cty. Republican Comm. , ––– Pa. ––––, 241 A.3d 1094 (2020) (per curiam ). Given that the framing the issue turns on Bentman , we open with a summary of the decision.

The matter might be regarded as technically moot, since the term of party office to which Appellant was elected has now expired. Appeal wasn't allowed, however, to address mootness considerations, and in any event, it appears that the scenario could evade our review if we declined the present consideration. See generally DEP v. Cromwell Twp., Huntingdon Cty. , 613 Pa. 1, 21, 32 A.3d 639, 652 (2011) (discussing the exceptions to the mootness doctrine).

In Bentman , two local Democratic Party committeepersons in the Philadelphia area were removed from their positions for alleged disloyalty manifested in their support of an unendorsed candidate for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. Along with several party electors, they commenced a mandamus action against the local party's executive committee. The committee interposed preliminary objections, which were sustained by the county court "[s]olely upon the jurisdictional ground that courts will not interfere with the actions and internal organization of a political party." Id. at 191, 218 A.2d at 263. This Court, however, held that the common pleas court had erred in finding that jurisdiction was lacking. See id. at 203, 218 A.2d at 269.

Notably, unlike the present circumstances, the alleged conduct occurred prior to the time that the committeepersons were first elected to their positions. See Bentman , 421 Pa. at 190 n.1, 218 A.2d at 263 n.1 ("The alleged disloyalty took place at a time when Cox and Schuchman were not party committeemen.").

Initially, the Bentman Court recognized the historical approach that "[p]olitical parties ... must govern themselves by party law. The courts cannot step in to compose party wrangles or to settle factional strife." Id. at 192, 218 A.2d at 264 (quoting Kearns v. Howley , 188 Pa. 116, 122, 41 A. 273, 275 (1898) ); see also Kenneck v. Pennock , 305 Pa. 288, 157 A. 613 (1931) (per curiam opinion) (refusing to entertain a challenge to the removal of a local party committeeperson, as the party leaders "are amenable alone to their party which is purely political" (quoting Kearns , 188 Pa. at 121, 41 A. at 274 ).

Contrary to Bentman as discussed below, the Kenneck Court discerned no difference deriving from the fact that committee offices are addressed by statute. See Kenneck , 305 Pa. at 289-90, 157 A. at 614 ("It is unnecessary to quote the act, as it is apparent appellants confuse public officers with party officers. A reading of the act clearly reveals that the familiar distinction between party officers and public officers is expressly observed." (emphasis in original)).

The Court related, however, that the General Assembly had subsequently enacted legislation providing for the constitution of local political committees via election or appointment, with the members being "subject to the control, direction and supervision of the political committee of which they are members." Bentman , 421 Pa. at 193, 218 A.2d at 264 (quoting 25 P.S. § 2842). Per this provision, the Bentman Court pronounced: "[I]t is evident that the legislature recognized a status in law in party committees and committeemen." Id. But see supra note 8. The Court also highlighted that offices of party committees had come to be filled through the same electoral processes and under the same statutory authority as public offices. See id. at 194, 218 A.2d at 265.

Against this background, the Court proceeded to frame the question presented as "whether the electors of a political party have a right, cognizable in a court of law, to choose whom they will to represent them in their party's organization and councils[.]" Id. at 195, 218 A.2d at 265. The Court continued:

The Court also observed that the committeepersons hadn't been removed "for anything which they had done as committeemen or in their representative capacity but by reason of that which it is alleged they had done prior to their election and selection." Id. at 195-96, 218 A.2d at 266 ; see supra 454 n.7.

The Executive Committee, by its action, has ignored the fact that these two persons by a majority of the party electorate were chosen to represent them, has rendered the electoral process a nullity and a farce, has denied the majority of the party electors the right to be represented by persons of their choice in the party councils and now urge[s] that the courts, because a political party is a private and not a public entity, are powerless to intervene.

Id. at 196, 218 A.2d at 266.

While characterizing the historical forbearance by courts from interfering in intra-party matters as "understandable," the Bentman Court found that legislative developments had altered the status quo. It highlighted, in particular, that the General Assembly had imposed the performance of some public functions on political parties, directly affecting the public at large and the government. See id. at 196, 218 A.2d at 266 ("Today, however, the relationship between political parties, the government and the public has become such that, in many areas, the public interest is not only directly affected by political parties but such parties actually perform public functions imposed upon them by law." (emphasis in original)). Given the intermixing of some public matters with party matters manifested in the Pennsylvania Election Code -- and particularly the delegation to local committees of the responsibility to make nominations for public office in special-election scenarios -- the Court found that local political parties can undertake state action, rendering their actions amenable to judicial review pursuant to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. See id. ("Insofar as a political party performs statutorily-imposed public functions and to the extent that its actions constitute state action, the internal organization of such political party is a matter of such concern to the public as to make it subject to constitutional limitations and judicial restraint."). Relative to the circumstances before the Court, it relied, in particular, on the fact that the local Democratic committee was responsible to nominate several candidates for judgeships created too late for the positions to be included in the primary election. See id. at 199, 218 A.2d at 267.

See also id. at 202, 218 A.2d at 269 ("When the activity of a party organization in such area or when its internal organization and membership has a direct bearing on its activity in such area is challenged as constitutionally offensive and it is claimed that, in the performance of its statutorily imposed duties amounting to state action, the party organization violates the concept of due process, then the judiciary not only may but must intervene." (emphasis in original)).

Significantly, Bentman doesn't hold that all actions by party committees constitute state action. See id. at 197, 218 A.2d at 266 ("The invocation of judicial interference in this area must be restricted or circumscribed[.]"). Rather, the Court fashioned a requirement that the action or actions under consideration must bear a "direct and substantial relationship to the performance of public functions by the political party." Id. at 197, 218 A.2d at 266 (emphasis in original); see also id. at 196-97, 218 A.2d at 266 ("Judicial interference, even with the internal organization of a political party, is justifiable if such internal organization may directly affect the performance of a public function and the public interest." (emphasis added)).

Returning to the premise that the new regime for judicial review of certain intra-party matters derived from the "legal status" of party committeepersons and political committees accorded by the General Assembly, the Court next addressed the argument that the statute's explicit allocation of control, direction, and supervision of committeepersons to the political committee should be read to maintain the status quo relative to the withholding of jurisdiction in the courts. In the Bentman Court's judgment, such approach would be "patently absurd and unreasonable," in that it would allow political committees to "nullify and ignore, without legal cause, the results of ... election[s.]" Id. at 198, 218 A.2d at 267. Instead, the Court expressed the aim of the legislation in the following terms taken from the decision of the Court of Appeals of New York in Coffey v. Democratic General Committee , 164 N.Y. 335, 58 N.E. 124 (1900) :

The dominant idea pervading the entire statute is the absolute assurance to the citizen that his wish as to the conduct of the affairs of his party may be expressed through his ballot, and thus given effect, whether it be in accord with the wishes of the leaders of his party or not, and that thus shall be put in effective operation, in the primaries, the underlying principle of democracy, which makes the will of an unfettered majority controlling. In other words, the scheme is to permit the voters to construct the organization from the bottom upwards, instead of permitting leaders to construct it from the top downwards.

Bentman , 421 Pa. at 198-99, 218 A.2d at 267 (quoting Coffey , 58 N.E. at 126 ).

The Bentman Court also emphasized that it was required to construe the statutory language, if possible, in such a manner as not to violate due process norms embodied in the United States Constitution. See id. at 199, 218 A.2d at 267 ; see also id. at 203, 218 A.2d at 269 ("Membership on that committee carries with it the right to participate in the selection of the political body which, under the legislative direction, in certain instances, selects the nominees for public office, an activity clearly constituting state action under the 14th Amendment."). It also reiterated that committee membership is an important right and privilege not only to the person elected but also to the voters who elected the person to act in a representative capacity. See id. at 203, 218 A.2d at 269. The Court then concluded:

To the extent that the instant action of the Executive Committee bears a relationship to the state action inherent in the selection of party nominees for public offices, such action may be tested in the judicial area to determine whether the action of the Executive Committee denying membership on the Committee to the chosen representatives of the party electorate offends against the constitutional

provision mandating due process in state action.

Id.

The Bentman decision isn't clear in terms of how direct the nexus with public affairs must be to justify the contemplated judicial interference in local intra-party matters. On the one hand, there is language in the decision that suggests that the mere conferral of some public function to a committee generally renders committee actions relative to the composition of its membership reviewable. On the other hand, the Bentman Court relied on a discrete nomination scenario in which the particular party committee in issue was charged with making actual nominations for public office, see id. at 199-200, 218 A.2d at 267-68, and the Court sustained a strong theme throughout centered on the requirement of directness.

See, e.g. , id. at 202, 218 A.2d at 269 ("The assumption of such obligations [to select nominees in special-election scenarios] by party organizations has marked the entry by such party organizations into an area of public activity which renders their activities in such area amenable to judicial supervision."); id. at 202, 218 A.2d at 269 ("Inasmuch as the legislature has seen fit to impose on political party organization certain duties which bear a direct and substantial relationship to the selection of public officials by the electoral process the complete privacy in nature of party organization recognized by our courts in the past no longer exists." (emphasis in original; footnote omitted)).

The present dispute centers on just how broadly Bentman should be read, particularly in terms of its "direct and substantial" litmus for state action. Appellant, for his part, advocates the broader interpretation. Although Appellant hasn't identified any specific vacancy in public office arising during the term of the party office for which he was elected, he stresses that the Bentman Court admonished that "[j]udicial interference, even within the internal organization of a party, is justifiable if such internal organization may directly affect the performance of a public function and the public interest." Brief for Appellant at 14 (quoting Bentman , 421 Pa. at 196-97, 218 A.2d at 266 ) (emphasis in original). According to Appellant, the word "may," in this context, means that "trial courts have jurisdiction to intervene any time a political party interferes with a committeeperson's ability to perform a duty to participate in the selection of candidates for local political offices." Id. at 14-15, 32 A.3d 639, 652 (emphasis in original); see also id. at 20, 32 A.3d 639, 652 ("If a vacancy in local [public] office occurs, there is no guarantee that future litigation could be resolved in time for [Appellant] to participate in the nomination of the candidate in the timeframe necessary for selecting the candidate and holding the special election. [Appellant] must not wait for such vacancy to occur").

Appellee, conversely, advocates the narrower approach to Bentman . See, e.g. , Brief for Appellee at 10 ("The holding in Bentman is much more discrete than that proposed by Appellant, because there the Democratic Party was participating in ‘state action,’ substituting its internal vote for a primary election for judicial offices."). According to Appellee, "Appellant consistently and incorrectly conflates his duties as the occupant of a party office by alleging a purely hypothetical ‘state action’ by [Appellee.]" Id. at 10-11, 32 A.3d 639, 652 ; see also id. at 11-13, 32 A.3d 639, 652 (characterizing the nexus with public functions relied upon by Appellant as "indirect, remote and contingent" and "inchoate or speculative"). Accepting Appellant's expansive reading of Bentman , Appellee posits, would cause an exception to overwhelm the rule. See id. at 13, 32 A.3d 639, 652 ("Political parties would be deprived of any right to define and determine their membership by removing members exhibiting hostility to their ‘shared beliefs’ because a duty to perform a state action could occur at any time during the term of a party officer." (emphasis in original)). Appellee also continues to rely on the line of decisions of the United States Supreme Court reaffirming the strength of the constitutional right of political association invested in political parties.

Upon review of Bentman , we find it to be remarkable that no mention is made of the political party's constitutional right of association. See generally Harvard Law Review Association, State Regulation of National Political Parties , 95 HARV. L. REV. 241, 247 n.34 (1981) (observing, with reference to Bentman , that "[m]any states have applied their law to local and state political parties without considering possible freedom of association claims"). Presumably, the omission results from the wide-scale development and clarification of this right after 1966, when the Bentman decision was rendered. See generally Michael L. Stokes, When Freedoms Conflict: Party Discipline and the First Amendment , 11 J.L. & POL. 751, 772 (1995) ("Throughout the 1970s, as the lower federal courts were fashioning a body of law protecting legislators from party discipline, the Supreme Court was proceeding in a different direction, developing a constitutional right of association as part of its First Amendment jurisprudence."); Ripon Soc'y, Inc. v. Nat'l Republican Party , 525 F.2d 567, 586 (D.C. Cir. 1975) ("Last term the [Supreme] Court in Cousins v. Wigoda placed the internal workings of a political party squarely within the protection of the First Amendment.").

In Ripon Society , the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia opined:

There are a number of respects ... in which the [political] parties conduct their affairs other than by giving equal attention to the preferences of all voters, or even all party adherents. Perhaps this is not surprising. A party is after all more than a forum for all its adherents’ views. It is an organized attempt to see the most important of those views put into practice through control of the levers of government. One party may think that the best way to do this is through a "strictly democratic" majoritarianism. But another may think it can only be done (let us say) by giving the proven party professional a greater voice than the newcomer. Which of these approaches is the more efficacious we cannot say, but the latter certainly seems a more accurate description of how political parties operate in reality.

What is important for our purposes is that a party's choice, as among various ways of governing itself, of the one which seems best calculated to strengthen the party and advance its interests, deserves the protection of the Constitution. ... [T]here must be a right not only to form political associations but to organize and direct them in the way that will make them most effective.

Ripon Soc'y , 525 F.2d at 584-85 (footnotes omitted). Notably, the Supreme Court of the United States cited affirmatively to a concurrence, in Ripon , for the proposition that the political parties have the right to select a "standard bearer who best represents the party's ideologies and preferences." Eu v. San Francisco Cty. Democratic Centr. Comm. , 489 U.S. 214, 224, 109 S. Ct. 1013, 1021, 103 L.Ed.2d 271 (1989) (quoting Ripon Soc'y , 525 F.2d at 601 (Tamm, J., concurring)).

Significantly, in Wigoda v. Cousins , 14 Ill.App.3d 460, 302 N.E.2d 614 (1973), an Illinois appellate court cited Bentman and the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in Coffey , upon which Bentman relied, in support of the proposition that "[t]he interest of the state in protecting the right to participate in primaries is superior to whatever other interests the party itself might wish to protect." Wigoda , 302 N.E.2d at 629. The Supreme Court of the United States disagreed, however, and the Illinois appellate court's decision was overturned with emphasis on the political party's right to freedom of association. See Wigoda , 419 U.S. at 488-91, 95 S. Ct. at 547-49.

We are not asked here to reconsider and/or to overrule Bentman but only to decide how broadly it should be read. Particularly upon consideration of Appellee's right of political association, we choose the narrower of the interpretations with which we are now presented. As developed above, under this approach, an individual must point to some discrete acts or actions entailing state action to establish the required direct-and-substantial nexus, such as the nomination of candidates for local judgeships raised in Bentman . Since Appellant has failed to do so, we credit Appellee's position that, "through its internal, self-organized apparatus, [it was] permitted to construe its own governing rules and to disqualify elected occupants of its offices from participation in its affairs by exercising its own judgment, free from judicial interference." Brief for Appellee at 6.

Similarly, we are also not asked to (and do not) consider whether there may be other circumstances, beyond the state-action criterion, that might justify judicial review of ostensibly intra-party matters. Notably, under the decisional law of the United States Supreme Court, intervention in derogation of a political party's associational rights can be appropriate when there is a compelling state interest. See, e.g. , Eu , 489 U.S. at 231, 109 S. Ct. at 1024. In this regard, that Court has been careful to express reservations about unduly constraining legitimate governmental regulation and, by analogy at least, judicial review. See, e.g. , id. at 232, 109 S. Ct. at 1025 ("This ... is not a case where [government] intervention is necessary to prevent the derogation of the civil rights of the party adherents."); McMenamin v. Phila. Cty. Democratic Exec. Comm. , 405 F. Supp. 998, 1001 (E.D. Pa. 1975) (refusing involvement in an internal party dispute over selection of a ward leader absent any racial, geographic, or fraudulent aspect).

Accord Eu , 489 U.S. at 230, 109 S. Ct. at 1024 ("Freedom of association also encompasses a political party's decisions about the identity of, and the process for electing, its leaders."); La Follette , 450 U.S. at 122 n.22, 101 S. Ct. at 1019 n.22 ("Freedom of association would prove an empty guarantee if associations could not limit control over their decisions to those who share the interests and persuasions that underlie the association's being." (quoting Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 791 (1978))). See generally Robert C. Wigton, American Political Parties Under the First Amendment , 7 J.L. & Pol'y 414-15 (1999) (explaining that "American political parties have always occupied a gray area of constitutional law because of their dual public-private nature," and positing that, "[i]n its more ‘private’ functions, such as selection of party leaders, the parties should retain maximum independence from government regulation, including judicial oversight.").

We acknowledge Appellant's invocation of the rights of the voters who elected him. It is far from certain, however, that those voters would chose to continue to support him in his departure from the will of their own party. Compare Bentman , 421 Pa. at 190, 218 A.2d at 263 (presenting a scenario in which several electors joined the affected committeepersons in challenging the party's actions). In any event, we have considered the fact that Appellant was elected as a committeeperson in a public election in the above calculus, relative to respective rights and interests involved.

The order of the Commonwealth Court is affirmed.

Chief Justice Baer and Justices Todd, Dougherty and Mundy join the opinion.

Justice Wecht files a concurring opinion.

Justice Donohue concurs in the result.

JUSTICE WECHT, concurring

I join the Court's conclusion that the Bucks County Republican Committee was empowered to expel Daniel Mohn from his position as an elected committeeman and that the Committee's decision was not subject to judicial review. However, I differ with the Majority's efforts to distinguish this matter from the sweeping jurisdictional rule announced in Bentman v. Seventh Ward Democratic Executive Committee , 421 Pa. 188, 218 A.2d 261 (1966). The Bentman Court misconstrued the state action doctrine and departed from longstanding precedent when it authorized the judiciary to interfere with the associational freedoms guaranteed to political parties by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Bentman rule persists despite nearly half-a-century of case law from the Supreme Court of the United States expressly curbing the judiciary's power to second-guess political parties’ internal personnel decisions. Since Bentman arguably is no longer good law, I would overrule it and align our jurisprudence with the High Court's decisions. Accordingly, I respectfully concur only in the result reached by today's Majority.

A close examination of the Bentman decision demonstrates the folly of preserving it. Decided in 1966, Bentman came at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, when state and federal courts began to wade into political disputes that they previously had avoided. Before Bentman , Pennsylvania courts expressly declined to meddle with the internal machinations of political parties, concluding that there is no right of property in party membership that could be enforced in equity. See Kearns v. Howley , 188 Pa. 116, 41 A. 273, 275 (1898) ("[P]olitical parties and party government are unknown to the law. They must govern themselves by party law. The courts cannot step in to compose party wrangles, or to settle factional strife. If they attempted it, it may well be doubted whether they would have much time for anything else."); Kenneck v. Pennock , 305 Pa. 288, 157 A. 613, 614 (Pa. 1931) (per curiam ) ("Ward committeemen have no municipal duties to perform, receive no compensation from the municipality, and the committee in which they may have membership is not a creature of the government, but solely pertains to an essentially political party.").

See, e.g. , Baker v. Carr , 369 U.S. 186, 209, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962) (holding that challenges to a State's legislative redistricting process are justiciable under the Fourteenth Amendment), abrogating Colegrove v. Green , 328 U.S. 549, 556, 66 S.Ct. 1198, 90 L.Ed. 1432 (1946) (plurality) ("Courts ought not to enter this political thicket.").

To the extent that the courts assumed jurisdiction to resolve intraparty disputes, it was limited to controversies arising from the "use of the public election machinery," as occurs when the political parties elect their officers during the spring primaries pursuant to Section 603 of the Election Code. See Commonwealth ex rel. Koontz v. Dunkle , 355 Pa. 493, 50 A.2d 496, 496 (1947) (citing 25 P.S. § 2753 ("General Primary; Candidates to Be Nominated and Party Officers to Be Elected ") (emphasis added)). But the courts’ authority to settle election contests and ballot disputes did not extend to forcing private parties to associate with one another. See id. at 497 (" ‘The courts can compel the issuance of a certificate of election to a party officer who has been elected, [(i.e. by the public machinery)] ..., but it cannot compel the members so elected to associate with each other ....’ ") (quoting Horan v. Blenk , 17 Pa. D. 363, 1908 WL 3410 at *2 (C.P. Phila. Cty. 1908) (bracketed material added in Koontz )).

The dispute in Bentman arose following the April 1964 Democratic primary election in Philadelphia County. A majority of Democratic voters in the 6^th and 10^th Divisions of the City's 7^th Ward elected Donald W. Cox and Hedvah Shuchman, respectively, to serve as members of the 7^th Ward Democratic Executive Committee. Their elections were certified and they were seated "without question." Bentman , 218 A.2d at 263. On August 10, 1964, Cox and Shuchman were notified that an Executive Committee meeting would be held two days later to consider and vote upon their removal as members of the committee. Id. The ward leader, Harry Melton, charged them "with having failed to act in harmony with the Executive Committee" after they allegedly supported and worked for the nomination of a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for the United States Senate who had not been endorsed by the party—despite the fact that their supposed disloyalty occurred before they had been elected to the committee. Id. at 263 & n.1. The Executive Committee removed them by a vote of 17-5. Melton then appointed two others to fill the vacancies on the committee. Id. at 263.

Luba Bentman and Patricia Evers, two Democratic Party electors who had voted for Cox and Shuchman at the primary election, joined them in filing "a mandamus action against the Executive Committee, Melton, ... and Francis Smith, Chairman of the Democratic County-City Committee." Id. The plaintiffs averred that: (i) Cox and Shuchman did not receive notice of the charges against them; (ii) the charges did not constitute grounds for removal; (iii) Cox and Shuchman's request to Smith concerning the matter and procedure for appealing their removal was ignored; (iv) the removal was without cause and due process in violation of the committee members’ constitutional rights; and (v) Cox and Shuchman had been denied their right and privilege to take part in party functions as regularly elected party committeemen. Id. The defendants filed preliminary objections asserting, inter alia , a lack of subject matter jurisdiction, which the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County sustained "[s]olely upon the jurisdictional ground that courts will not interfere with the actions and internal organization of a political party." Id. The plaintiffs appealed to this Court.

The Bentman majority began its analysis by noting the plaintiffs’ concession that, from the late nineteenth century until at least 1947, Pennsylvania courts would not entertain this type of litigation in law or equity. Id. (citing Koontz , 50 A.2d at 496-97 (affirming trial court order denying issuance of writ of quo warranto to test the right to office of county chairman of a political party, reasoning that party offices are private, not public)); see also Kenneck , 157 A. at 613-14 (adopting the trial court's opinion denying relief to duly elected Philadelphia Republican Party ward members who were excluded from committee membership because appellants were party, not public, officers and thus answered to their party alone)). The plaintiffs asserted that changes in statutory law and the impact of recent federal court decisions necessitated reconsideration of the established rule.

Pertinently, in July 1947, six months after Koontz was decided, the General Assembly added Section 812 to the Election Code, which provides:

Whenever two or more members of a political party shall be elected or appointed, as the rules of the party may provide, as members of a political committee to represent the members of such party in the respective election districts, such members shall constitute a political committee of said party to function within such election district: Provided, that, When acting in the capacity of a political committee, such duly elected or appointed members shall be subject to the control, direction and supervision

of the political committee of which they are members.

25 P.S. § 2842 ("District committees"). Cox and Shuchman suggested that Section 812 "confer[red] upon political or party committeemen such legal status as to make them amenable to the jurisdiction of the courts." Bentman , 218 A.2d at 264. The Bentman Court agreed, viewing Section 812 as evidence of the General Assembly's intent to "recognize[ ] a status in law in party committees and committeemen." Id. at 264-65 ; see id. at 265 ("It is clear beyond question that certain party offices, including that of party committee, are now filled through the same electoral process and under State statutory authority as public offices, except that voting for party offices is restricted to qualified electors of the party.").

The Court observed that Cox and Shuchman were removed from offices to which they were duly elected not because of anything they did while in office, but due to allegations of conduct that preceded their elections. Id. at 266. Given those grounds for disqualification, the Court stressed that

[t]he Executive Committee, by its action, has ignored the fact that these two persons by a majority of the party electorate were chosen to represent them, has rendered the electoral process a nullity and a farce, has denied the majority of the party electors the right to be represented by persons of their choice in the party councils and now urge that the courts, because a political party is a private and not a public entity, are powerless to intervene.

Id. The Court then explained away the judiciary's past reluctance to interfere with internal party management by pointing to what it considered to be the integration of political party governance within Pennsylvania law.

The relationship between political parties, the government and the public has become such that, in many areas, the public interest is not only directly affected by political parties but such parties actually perform public functions imposed upon them by law. Insofar as a political party performs statutorily-imposed public functions and to the extent that its actions constitute state action, the internal organization of such political party is a matter of such concern to the public as to make it subject to constitutional limitations and judicial restraint. When the internal organization of a political party directly affects its performance of such public function then not only may the judiciary intervene but it must intervene.

Id. (capitalization altered).

The Court justified its departure from its early cases by invoking the doctrine of "state action" under the Fourteenth Amendment, "the extension [of which] in recent years" it viewed as reflecting "a change of judicial thinking in this area of the law." Id. Since the General Assembly had "seen fit to impose upon political party organizations the performance of certain public functions which directly affect the public and our government," the Court reasoned that "[j]udicial interference, even with the internal organization of a political party, is justifiable if such internal organization may directly affect the performance of a public function and the public interest." Id. Nonetheless, the Court cautioned that such interference "must be restricted or circumscribed"—i.e. , it "must be limited to controversies where the issue raised bears a direct and substantial relationship to the performance of public functions by the political party." Id. (capitalization altered).

In the Court's view, the addition of Section 812 in 1947 "clearly gave recognition to the legal status of party committeemen and political committees, the lack of which up to that time had been questioned by our courts." Id. But what effect should be given to the statute's proviso giving the "control, direction and supervision" of party committeemen to the parties themselves? The Court responded with two rules of statutory construction: the presumptions that the Legislature does not intend absurd or unreasonable results; and that it does not intend to violate the Constitutions of the United States or Pennsylvania. Id.

On this basis, the Court reasoned that it would be indefensible to construe the "control, direction and supervision" language of Section 812 to mean that the Executive Committee has "the authority to refuse recognition to the choice of the party electors in the selection of party committeemen and to refuse to allow them to act as party committeemen." Id. at 266-67.

[P]arty electors are expressly given the right to select their representatives on the political committee at an election paid for out of the public treasury and conducted under official government auspices .... [I]f after all this legislatively provided procedure, the Executive Committee of the ward is to have the right, under the guise of ‘control, direction and supervision’ of the party committeemen, to nullify and ignore, without legal cause, the results of such election and selection of party committeemen, we reach a result patently absurd and unreasonable.

Id. at 267 ; see id. (citing People ex rel. Coffey v. Democratic Gen. Comm. , 164 N.Y. 335, 58 N.E. 124, 126 (1900), for the proposition that the aim of such election statutes "is the absolute assurance to the citizen that his wish as to the conduct of the affairs of his party may be expressed through his ballot, and thus given effect, whether it be in accord with the wishes of the leaders of his party or not. ... In other words, the scheme is to permit the voters to construct the organization from the bottom upwards, instead of permitting leaders to construct it from the top downwards").

Drawing inspiration from the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in Coffey , the Bentman Court observed that the Election Code "and other legislation" mandates that the parties "perform functions which are definitely [p]ublic in character." Id. These functions include: (i) filling vacancies that occur after a primary election by reason of death or withdrawal of a candidate ( 25 P.S. § 2939 ); (ii) selecting the party's nominee in the event of a special election to fill a vacancy in Congress or the General Assembly (id. § 2780); and (iii) consulting with the party county chairman in special emergencies before making appointments to fill existing vacancies in the legislature ( 46 P.S. § 145.7 ) and the judiciary ( 71 P.S. § 779.8 ). Bentman , 218 A.2d at 267.

The Court then homed in on "a striking example of [d]irect action by a political party in a public function" identified by Cox and Shuchman, namely, the creation of additional judgeships in Philadelphia County by the General Assembly in 1964. Id. Because these new seats were created too late in the year for candidates to be nominated by the electorate at the regularly scheduled primary election, the parties were permitted to name their nominees for the judgeships in accordance with their party rules pursuant to Section 993 of the Election Code. Id. (citing 25 P.S. § 2953 ). The selection of nominees for these new seats allegedly animated the 7^th Ward leaders to remove the erstwhile apostates, Cox and Shuchman, from their positions on the local committee without cause, because the local committees select the members who would serve on the Democratic County Committee, which ultimately would name the candidates for these judgeships. Id. As Cox and Shuchman saw it, their removal deprived them of a right to participate in, and cast their votes for, the individuals who would constitute the county committee. Id. at 267-68. The removal likewise deprived the plaintiff voters (Bentman and Evers) of their right to select the party's ward representatives, who would then vote for the county committee members tasked with making the nominations. Id. at 268.

Lastly—and perhaps most significantly—the Court, without any analysis, simply cited the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Smith v. Allwright , 321 U.S. 649, 64 S.Ct. 757, 88 L.Ed. 987 (1944), for the proposition that the selection of party nominees for a general election is state action subject to constitutional constraint. Bentman , 218 A.2d at 268. Summarizing its view of the prevailing state of the law in 1966, the Court offered the following observations:

See also Bentman , 218 A.2d at 268 (citing Bell v. Georgia Dental Assoc. , 231 F. Supp. 299 (N.D. Ga. 1964) (finding that exclusion of racial minority groups from the right to participate in the Dental Association's selection of names for appointment to state agencies violated the U.S. Constitution; even though dental associations are generally private in character, the legislature gave them the power to engage in state action by making nominations); Rice v. Elmore , 165 F.2d 387, 391 (4th Cir. 1947) ("When these [party] officials participate in what is a part of the state's election machinery, they are election officers of the state de facto if not de jure , and as such must observe the limitations of the Constitution. Having undertaken to perform an important function relating to the exercise of sovereignty by the people, they may not violate the fundamental principles laid down by the Constitution for its exercise.")). But see Lynch v. Torquato , 343 F.2d 370, 372 (3d Cir. 1965) ("[T]he citizen's constitutional right to equality as an elector ... applies to the choice of those who shall be his elected representatives in the conduct of government, not in the internal management of a political party.").

Inasmuch as the legislature has seen fit to impose on political party organization certain duties which bear a direct and substantial relationship to the selection of public officials by the electoral process[,] the complete privacy in nature of party organization recognized by our courts in the past no longer exists. The assumption of such obligations by party organizations has marked the entry by such party organizations into an area of public activity which renders their activities in such area amenable to judicial supervision. When the activity of a party organization in such area or when its internal organization and membership has a direct bearing on its activity in such area is challenged as constitutionally offensive and it is claimed that, in the performance of its statutorily imposed duties amounting to state action, the party organization violates the concept of due process, then the judiciary not only may but must intervene.

The challenge in this action is to the right of a party committee to refuse recognition of membership on such committee to persons who have been lawfully elected to such membership by a majority of the qualified party electors. Membership on such committee, a status now legally recognized, is an important right and privilege not only to the person elected but also to the voters who elected such person to act as their representatives on the committee. Membership on that committee carries with it the right to participate in selection of the political body which, under the legislative direction, in certain instances, selects the party nominees for public office, an activity clearly constituting state action under the 14th Amendment. Deprivation of such membership and the concomitant right of participation in the

selection of public officers bears such a direct and substantial relationship to the electoral process as to be a matter of judicial concern; only by the intervention of the courts can the constitutional limitations on the exercise of state action be safeguarded.

To the extent that the instant action of the Executive Committee bears a relationship to the state action inherent in the selection of party nominees for public offices, such action may be tested in the judicial area to determine whether the action of the Executive Committee denying membership on the Committee to the chosen representatives of the party electorate offends against the constitutional provision mandating due process in state action.

Id. at 269 (capitalization altered; footnote omitted). Under these circumstances, the Court held that the trial court's determination that it lacked jurisdiction to consider the plaintiffs’ mandamus action was erroneous.

Justice Cohen dissented, criticizing the majority for holding that courts have jurisdiction to issue writs of mandamus compelling the reinstatement of ousted committee members of political parties where no vacancies existed in those party offices. Bentman , 218 A.2d at 269-70 ("In so holding, the majority may have overlooked one crucial fact—that before the outsiders can get in, the insiders must be ordered out. And this, I am afraid, no court should ever accomplish by writ of mandamus ."). Because the plaintiffs effectively sought to test the right of their successors to those positions, the dissent concluded that their "exclusive remedy is quo warranto ," not mandamus . Id. at 270. In Justice Cohen's view, where the issue is title to office, "due process demands that the succeeding office holder be accorded ample notice of and opportunity to appear in proceedings which seek to declare vacant the office of which he is the current occupant." Id. Given what it deemed the "patent non-joinder of necessary parties in interest" here, the dissent would have affirmed the trial court's order and required the plaintiffs to proceed in quo warranto , with their successors in office joined as necessary parties "pursuant to the principle of equity," so that "when the court has obtained jurisdiction of the subject matter, it shall include all parties to it and make a final determination of the whole." Id. at 271.

The Bentman Court erred in relying upon Smith v. Allwright to support its novel jurisdictional hook, and its error becomes even more apparent in light of more than half-a-century of subsequent decisional law from the High Court clarifying the limits on governmental interference with the associational rights of political parties.

Smith was a seminal decision concerning the Fifteenth Amendment's prohibition against state laws burdening the franchise on the basis of race. But it can only be understood in the context of a series of challenges to Southern primaries decided in the decades that preceded it. In 1924, Texas law declared that black people could not participate in the Texas Democratic Party's primaries, notwithstanding provisions of the Texas Constitution setting the qualifications for electors that did not exclude black voters from the ballot box. In Nixon v. Herndon , 273 U.S. 536, 47 S.Ct. 446, 71 L.Ed. 759 (1927), the Supreme Court unanimously held that Texas’ statutory denial of the primary ballot to Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon, a black physician and member of the Democratic Party, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Texas Legislature reenacted the law, it gave the executive committee of a state party "the power to prescribe the qualifications of its members for voting or other participation." Smith , 321 U.S. at 658, 64 S.Ct. 757. The executive committee of the Texas Democratic Party promptly adopted a resolution refusing to allow non-white voters to participate in its primary elections. Dr. Nixon sued once more, and the High Court

again reversed the dismissal of the suit for the reason that the Committee action

was deemed to be State action and invalid as discriminatory under the Fourteenth Amendment. The test was said to be whether the Committee operated as representative of the State in the discharge of the State's authority.

Id. (citing Nixon v. Condon , 286 U.S. 73, 52 S.Ct. 484, 76 L.Ed. 984 (1932) ). However, "[t]he question of the inherent power of a political party in Texas ‘without restraint by any law to determine its own membership’ was left open." Id. at 659, 64 S.Ct. 757 (quoting Nixon , 286 U.S. at 83, 52 S.Ct. 484 ).

The Court confronted that open question in yet another Texas case, Grovey v. Townsend , 295 U.S. 45, 55 S.Ct. 622, 79 L.Ed. 1292 (1935), which involved a racially exclusionary resolution adopted not by the executive committee but by a state convention of the Democratic Party. Because the Grovey Court considered the convention's "action [to be] unfettered by statutory control," the Court reached a different result than its Nixon decisions, unanimously holding "that to deny a vote in a primary was a mere refusal of party membership with which ‘the state need have no concern.’ " Smith , 321 U.S. at 659, 661, 64 S.Ct. 757 (quoting Grovey , 295 U.S. at 55, 55 S.Ct. 622 ).

Six years later, the Court decided United States v. Classic , 313 U.S. 299, 61 S.Ct. 1031, 85 L.Ed. 1368 (1941), which concerned the Democratic primary for Congress in Louisiana, where election commissioners, selected in accordance with state law, "willfully altered and falsely counted and certified the ballots." Id. at 307, 61 S.Ct. 1031. Proclaiming "the right of qualified voters within a state to cast their ballot and have them counted at Congressional elections," id. at 315, 61 S.Ct. 1031, the Court held that Article I, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress to regulate both primary and general elections "where the primary is by law made an integral part of the election machinery." Id. at 318, 61 S.Ct. 1031. In contrast with Congress’ authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which is limited by the state action doctrine, Classic made clear that, because "the constitutional command" of Article I, Section 4, "is without restriction or limitation, the right" to cast a meaningful vote in federal elections "is secured against the action of individuals as well as of states." Id. at 315, 61 S.Ct. 1031. While the Court's earlier decisions did not rest on Classic ’s newly-refined state action analysis, which focused on Congress’ power to regulate federal elections, the elevation of the primary process to an indispensable preliminary stage for non-federal elections would prove essential to the Court's decision in Smith .

At issue in Smith was the denial of a primary ballot to a black voter during the 1940 Texas Democratic primary for state as well as federal offices. Since both the statutes regulating Texas’ primaries and the Texas Democratic Party's exclusionary resolution limiting party membership to white citizens only largely had remained "the same in substance and effect ... as they were when Grovey v. Townsend was decided," the Court had no choice but to reconsider that earlier decision, which upheld the exclusion of non-white voters "from primaries through the denial of party membership by a party convention." Smith , 321 U.S. at 661, 64 S.Ct. 757. In doing so, the Court found that the Classic scenario, whereby States "fus[e] ... the primary and general elections into a single instrumentality for choice of officers," also "ha[d] a definite bearing on the permissibility under the Constitution of excluding Negroes from primaries" for non-federal elections. Id. at 660, 64 S.Ct. 757. The Court reasoned that

Classic bears upon Grovey v. Townsend not because the exclusion of Negroes from primaries is any more or less state action by reason of the unitary character of the electoral process but because the recognition of the place of the primary in the electoral scheme makes clear that state delegation to a party of the power to fix the qualifications of primary elections is delegation of a state function that may make the party's action the action of the state .

Id. (emphasis added).

Scrutinizing the State's election statutes, the Court described how the Democratic Party's process for selecting its nominees for public office had become intertwined with Texas’ laws governing general elections for the same. Id. at 662-63, 64 S.Ct. 757.

We think that this statutory system for the selection of party nominees for inclusion on the general election ballot makes the party which is required to follow these legislative directions an agency of the state in so far as it determines the participants in a primary election. The party takes its character as a state agency from the duties imposed upon it by state statutes; the duties do not become matters of private law because they are performed by a political party. ... [I]t is state action which compels. When primaries become a part of the machinery for choosing officials, state and national, as they have here, the same tests to determine the character of discrimination or abridgement should be applied to the primary as are applied to the general election. If the state requires a certain electoral procedure, prescribes a general election ballot made up of party nominees so chosen and limits the choice of the electorate in general elections for state offices, practically speaking, to those whose names appear on such a ballot, it endorses, adopts and enforces the discrimination against Negroes, practiced by a party entrusted by Texas law with the determination of the qualifications of participants in the primary. This is state action within the meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment.

The United States is a constitutional democracy. Its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials without restriction by any state because of race. This grant to the people of the opportunity for choice is not to be nullified by a state through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election. Constitutional rights would be of little value if they could be thus indirectly denied.

Id. at 663-64 (citations omitted).

While "[t]he privilege of membership in a party may be ... no concern of a state," the Court concluded that when it is rendered "the essential qualification for voting in a primary to select nominees for a general election, the state makes the action of the party the action of the state." Id. at 664-65, 64 S.Ct. 757. Accordingly, "the well established principle of the Fifteenth Amendment, forbidding the abridgement by a state of a citizen's right to vote" on account of race, demanded that the permissive rule of Grovey yield to the preeminent right of suffrage. Id. at 666, 64 S.Ct. 757. Cf. Terry v. Adams , 345 U.S. 461, 484, 73 S.Ct. 809, 97 L.Ed. 1152 (1953) (Clark, J., concurring) ("[W]hen a state structures its electoral apparatus in a form which devolves upon a political organization the uncontested choice of public officials, that organization itself, in whatever disguise, takes on those attributes of government which draw the Constitution's safeguards in play."). Bentman shares few, if any, of the hallmarks of the foregoing precedents. First and foremost, Smith and its antecedents were principally concerned with race-based discrimination that barred non-white voters from participating in party primaries for public office, where those primaries, by law, had become an "integral part of the election machinery" for choosing state and federal officers. Smith , 321 U.S. at 659-60, 64 S.Ct. 757 (citing Classic , 313 U.S. at 318, 61 S.Ct. 1031 ). There were no such claims in Bentman . The plaintiffs were not prohibited from voting in the Democratic Party's primary for public offices in Philadelphia County or elsewhere, nor did they assert that their right to vote had been impacted by considerations of race or any other suspect classification limiting the "privilege of membership" in the local party. See id. at 664-65, 64 S.Ct. 757. In fact, Bentman makes no mention of the Fifteenth Amendment, on which Smith was grounded, or the Equal Protection Clause, which animated both Nixon decisions. Cf. Lynch , 343 F.2d at 372 ("Whether the equalitarian requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment extends to procedural alternatives of primary elections, and particularly to such post-primary emergency nominations ..., may well be doubted.").

The Court capped off this line of cases with Terry , which involved the Jaybird Democratic Association of Fort Bend County, Texas, a "self-governing voluntary club" that limited membership to whites since its inception in 1889. 345 U.S. at 462, 73 S.Ct. 809 (plurality). Following what the three-Justice opinion announcing the judgment of the Court described as "a plan purposefully designed to exclude Negroes from voting and at the same time escape the Fifteenth Amendment's command," the Jaybirds intentionally held their whites-only primary a month or so ahead of the Democratic Party's primary; Jaybird-endorsed candidates then "nearly always" ran in and won the Democratic primary and general election "without opposition." Id. at 463-64, 73 S.Ct. 809. Although eight Justices agreed that this practice violated the rights of non-white voters because the elections subsequent to the Jaybird primary had "become no more than the perfunctory ratifiers of the choice that ha[d] already been made" in a racially discriminatory process ostensibly beyond the State's control, id. at 469, 73 S.Ct. 809, no rationale garnered majority support.

To be clear, the state action prerequisite in those federal cases was satisfied by Texas’ delegation of the power to set voter qualification to the state Democratic Party, and its implicit ratification of the party's invidious racial discrimination in its primary process, which together effectively precluded black voters from ever electing the candidates of their choice at a time when the Lone Star State was under one-party control. The Supreme Court expressly endorsed this reading of Smith and Terry in California Democratic Party v. Jones , 530 U.S. 567, 120 S.Ct. 2402, 147 L.Ed.2d 502 (2000). There, the Court explained that those decisions "held only that, when a State prescribes an election process that gives a special role to political parties, it ‘endorses, adopts and enforces the discrimination against Negroes’ that the parties ... bring into the process—so that the parties’ discriminatory action becomes state action under the Fifteenth Amendment." Id. at 573, 120 S.Ct. 2402 (emphasis added; citations omitted). The Bentman plaintiffs faced nothing of the kind.

The same discriminatory practices almost certainly would fail strict scrutiny under the fundamental-rights framework of the High Court's contemporary Equal Protection jurisprudence. See Harper v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections , 383 U.S. 663, 670, 86 S.Ct. 1079, 16 L.Ed.2d 169 (1966) ("[W]here fundamental rights and liberties are asserted under the Equal Protection Clause, classifications which might invade or restrain them must be closely scrutinized and carefully confined.").

In the absence of a suspect classification, the Bentman Court instead relied upon a creative interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Specifically, the Court considered membership on a party committee to be "an important right and privilege," the deprivation of which triggers constitutional protections because it dispossesses the office holder of a "concomitant right of participation in the selection of public officers." Bentman , 218 A.2d at 269. Perhaps cognizant of the novelty of its holding, the Court cautioned that jurisdiction is established only when the deprivation "bears such a direct and substantial relationship to the electoral process as to be a matter of judicial concern." Id. (capitalization altered). Setting aside the apparent malleability of this "standard," central to the Court's reasoning was its determination that, by promulgating Section 812 of the Election Code, the General Assembly in 1947 "recognized a" theretofore unknown "status in law in party committees and committeemen." Id. at 264-65. Yet the Court's epiphany was mistaken, as political parties, party officers, and their constituent committees already were recognized "in law" when the Election Code was adopted in 1937. See Act of June 3, 1937, P.L. 1333. Not only did that Act codify a definition of "political party," it set forth a comprehensive series of qualifications and procedures for electing party officers.

See, e.g. , Act of June 3, 1937, P.L. 1333, art. VIII, § 801 ("Definition of political parties and political bodies"); id. § 802 ("No person who is not registered and enrolled as a member of a political party shall be entitled to vote at any primary of such party or to be elected or serve as a party officer, or a member or officer of any party committee ...."); id. § 807 ("There may be in each county a county committee for each political party within such county, the members of which shall be elected at the spring primary, or appointed, as the rules of the respective parties within the county may provide. ..."); id. § 810 ("Candidates for ... party offices [other than for the office of member of the State or National Committee], who receive a plurality of the votes of the party electors at a primary, shall be the party officers of their respective parties.").

Neither the promulgation of the Election Code in 1937 nor the addition of Section 812 a decade later disturbed this Court's conclusion in Kearns that "[t]he right to be a member [of a party committee] is not conferred by any statute." Kearns , 41 A. at 274 ("Membership [on a party committee] is a privilege which may be accorded or withheld, and not a right which can be gained independently, and then enforced."). Contrary to the Bentman Court's view, Section 812 did not imbue committee membership—i.e. , party office—with constitutionally protected status. If anything, it simply confirmed the truism that the "duly elected or appointed members" of those committees "shall be subject to the control, direction and supervision of the political committee of which they are members." 25 P.S. § 2842. In other words, party officers serve at the party's pleasure. But to reach the contrary result in Bentman , the Court unnecessarily resorted to tools of statutory construction where none was called for, because the statute was unambiguous on the matter. By its plain terms, Section 812 commits the "control, direction and supervision" of elected or appointed committee members to the committee itself. Id. Interpreting that clear command so as to permit the removal of elected committee members "without legal cause" would, in the Bentman Court's view, "reach a result patently absurd and unreasonable" in violation of the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. 218 A.2d at 267. I disagree.

Section 812 is clear: without exception, local party officers are subject to the "control, direction and supervision" of the local party committee. There simply was no cause to invoke absurdity in Bentman , because that interpretative canon is inapplicable unless two limiting conditions are satisfied, neither of which applies to that statute. See Commonwealth v. Peck , 242 A.3d 1274, 1286-87 (Pa. 2020) (Wecht, J., concurring) (noting that "the ostensible absurdity ‘must consist of a disposition that no reasonable person could intend,’ " and that it " ‘must be reparable by changing or supplying a particular word or phrase whose inclusion or omission was obviously a technical or ministerial error’ ") (quoting ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW: THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGAL TEXTS 237-38 (2012)). There is nothing absurd or unreasonable about a political party disciplining its officers, including by way of removal from office, for violating the party's internal bylaws, ignoring assigned duties, or contravening committee endorsements. That authority exists independent of the Election Code. Indeed, parties are not required to provide any public justification for removing individuals from party office. And it certainly is not for the courts to second-guess those decisions, even when the grounds for discipline might appear to be pretextual.

It is well-settled that political parties have the right to protect themselves "from intrusion by those with adverse political principles." Ray v. Blair , 343 U.S. 214, 221-22, 72 S.Ct. 654, 96 L.Ed. 894 (1952). That necessarily includes "the freedom to identify the people who constitute the association, and to limit the association to those people only." Democratic Party of the United States v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette , 450 U.S. 107, 122, 101 S.Ct. 1010, 67 L.Ed.2d 82 (1981). In La Follette , the Supreme Court cautioned that "the stringency, and wisdom, of membership requirements is for the association and its members to decide—not the courts—so long as those requirements are otherwise constitutionally permissible." 450 U.S. at 123 n.25, 101 S.Ct. 1010. While Smith and Classic concerned racial discrimination, the principles expounded by the High Court in those decisions, as refined by Harper and its progeny, undoubtedly prohibit political parties from using many other classifications, suspect or not, to discriminate against those who wish to enroll as party members—so long as party membership remains the "essential qualification" for utilizing the State's primary election machinery.

See Sweezy v. New Hampshire , 354 U.S. 234, 250, 77 S.Ct. 1203, 1 L.Ed.2d 1311 (1957) ("Any interference with the freedom of a party is simultaneously an interference with the freedom of its adherents."); accord Kusper v. Pontikes , 414 U.S. 51, 56-57, 94 S.Ct. 303, 38 L.Ed.2d 260 (1973) ("There can no longer be any doubt that freedom to associate with others for the common advancement of political beliefs and ideas is a form of ‘orderly group activity’ protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. ... The right to associate with the political party of one's choice is an integral part of this basic constitutional freedom."); Williams v. Rhodes , 393 U.S. 23, 30-31, 89 S.Ct. 5, 21 L.Ed.2d 24 (1968) ("And of course this freedom protected against federal encroachment by the First Amendment is entitled under the Fourteenth Amendment to the same protection from infringement by the States.").

That was not the situation confronting the Bentman Court, however, because party member , as those federal cases understood the term, was not synonymous with party officer , which is what Article VIII of the Election Code is concerned with. It is one thing to concede, as we must, that a political party has a constitutional obligation to tolerate individual memberships (however undesirable a given enrollee may be) so that eligible electors may exercise their right to participate in the electoral process. But that concession does not mean that courts can foist unwelcome officers upon the organization merely because those officers infrequently might have a role in selecting nominees for special elections to fill vacancies in public offices, no matter how removed from the ultimate selection they are. A political party's right to control its own leadership is sacrosanct.

In that sense, endeavoring to resolve internal party disputes against the party is akin, for First Amendment purposes, to "[r]equiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister," which the courts cannot do. See Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. Equal Emp't Opportunity Comm'n , 565 U.S. 171, 188-89, 132 S.Ct. 694, 181 L.Ed.2d 650 (2012) (recognizing the "ministerial exception" to certain employment anti-discrimination laws).

That Cox and Shuchman were, like Mohn, elected committee members is of no moment. In Cousins v. Wigoda , 419 U.S. 477, 95 S.Ct. 541, 42 L.Ed.2d 595 (1975), and La Follette , the States of Illinois and Wisconsin, respectively, contended that state election law should be accorded primacy over the national Democratic Party's rules for determining the qualifications and eligibility of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, notwithstanding the fact that the States held their elections for delegates in a manner contrary to the national party's rules. The Supreme Court pointedly rejected Illinois’ assertion, adopted by the intermediate appellate court, that " ‘protecting the effective right to participate in primaries is superior to whatever other interests the party itself might wish to protect.’ " Cousins , 419 U.S. at 488, 95 S.Ct. 541 (quoting Wigoda v. Cousins , 14 Ill.App.3d 460, 302 N.E.2d 614, 629 (1973) ). While the Court acknowledged that the State's interests were "legitimate," they were not sufficiently "compelling" to justify abridging the right of political association enjoyed by the national party to exclude slates of delegates selected in contravention of party rules. Id. at 489, 95 S. Ct. 541, 547 ; cf. La Follette , 450 U.S. at 114, 101 S.Ct. 1010 (concluding that Wisconsin's interest in "maintaining the special feature of its primary ... which permits private declaration of party preference"—a feature the State claimed was necessary to "preserv[e] the overall integrity of the electoral process, provid[e] secrecy of the ballot, increas[e] voter participation in primaries, and prevent[ ] harassment of voters"—did not "justify its substantial intrusion into the association freedom of members of the National Party").

If the asserted interest of honoring the election results for party delegates deliberately chosen in order to participate in the quadrennial nomination of a candidate for President of the United States was not compelling enough to override a political party's First Amendment associational freedom to exclude, how can we continue to maintain that an elected party officer has a vested, judicially enforceable right not to be excluded from party office on the grounds that one day he might participate in a committee process for nominating candidates to fill vacancies in county public office, as Bentman requires? We can't, or at least shouldn't. Bentman is irreconcilable with the First Amendment, and has been since its inception. Cousins , La Follette , and Jones make that much clear. See Jones , 530 U.S. at 573, 120 S.Ct. 2402 (rejecting "the proposition that party affairs are public affairs free of First Amendment protections"). Of course, the Bentman Court lacked the benefit of these landmark precedents in 1966. But that is no excuse for persisting in our error now that we have the opportunity to correct it, which we may do sua sponte . See Freed v. Geisinger Med. Ctr., 601 Pa. 233, 971 A.2d 1202, 1212 (2009), on reargument , 607 Pa. 225, 5 A.3d 212, 215 (2010) ("[T]here is no absolute jurisprudential bar to this Court's sua sponte reconsideration of precedent."). As Bentman knitted a jurisdictional rule from whole cloth on specious grounds, reconsideration would be entirely appropriate now, notwithstanding that we have not been asked to do so. See Maj. Op. at 459.

Today's Majority makes a salutary effort to save Bentman by adopting a "narrower" interpretation of its jurisdictional decree, under which "an individual must point to some discrete acts or actions entailing state action to establish the required direct-and-substantial nexus." Id. Respectfully, that standard will always be untenable as it pertains to disciplining party officers. The Election Code gives both political parties and political bodies the authority to nominate candidates to fill vacancies for public office outside of the traditional primary election process in limited circumstances. See 25 P.S. § 2953(a). At any moment, a vacancy could arise that directly calls for the performance of some substantial "public function" by a party committee—e.g. , selecting a substitute nominee. Bentman , 218 A.2d at 266. Were the removal process for any party officer to occur too close in time to a vacancy in public office, as was the (albeit sui generis ) case in Bentman , the threat of costly litigation and court intervention could saddle the committees with officers whose interests are not aligned with those of the party. I can think of few burdens on a party's associational rights more severe than subjecting a party's "control, direction and supervision" of its officers to the whims of the judiciary. Judges are not in a better position than party members to determine the "right time" for disciplining or culling derelict officers. And even if we thought we were, we may not "constitutionally substitute [our] own judgment for that of the Party." La Follette , 450 U.S. at 123-24, 101 S.Ct. 1010.

The judiciary must remain mindful that the General Assembly authorized the use of the primary election ballot to fill party offices as a matter of convenience to political parties, not so as to exert greater control over them. Indeed, the Election Code expressly recognizes the parties’ right to dispense with elections for party office, if they so choose, and to govern themselves by appointment alone if they "deem [it] expedient." See 25 P.S. § 2837. While the courts have the power to resolve election contests conducted with the Commonwealth's "election machinery," there simply is no individual "right" to persist in party office that is enforceable against the collective will of the party to select different leaders. Although it is true that removal proceedings necessarily have the harsh effect of "nullifying" the results of a prior election, "the proper forum for determining intraparty disputes" of this nature is the party itself, not the courts. Cousins , 419 U.S. at 491, 95 S.Ct. 541. Because there is no way to harmonize Bentman with the Supreme Court's binding First Amendment precedent, we only invite further mischief in derogation of constitutional mandates by refusing to overrule it.

Mohn v. Bucks Cnty. Republican Comm.

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Mohn v. Bucks Cnty. Republican Comm.

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Mohn v. Bucks Cnty. Republican Comm.

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Mohn v. Bucks Cnty. Republican Comm.

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