THE CONSTITUTION PROTECTS US UNLESS WE STOP DEFENDING IT

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Environmental Rights Amendment hinges on two landmark cases: Robinson Township v. Commonwealth and Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) v. Commonwealth.

In the Robinson Township case, the court struck down parts of Act 13 – a law that prioritized fracking over local zoning.  This ruling affirmed that Pennsylvanians have an enforceable, constitutional right to clean air, pure water, and a healthy environment. 

Four years later, in PEDF v. Commonwealth, the court reaffirmed that the state holds public natural resources in trust for the people and cannot divert oil and gas revenues to the general fund without violating that duty.  Together, these decisions form the backbone of environmental constitutionalism in Pennsylvania and underscore why judicial retention matters.  Without these justices, the legal foundation for defending communities in Berks against environmental harm could erode quite literally the ground beneath us and our environmental laws. 

Meanwhile, the federal government is gutting its own guardrails.  In Sept 2025, the Council on Environmental Quality released new guidance to fast-track National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews.  Agencies can now skip full Environmental Impact Statements, shorten public comment windows, and greenlight infrastructure projects without modeling future climate risk.  That’s stupid and dangerous. 

So what do we do?  We keep hope alive and vote to retain the justices who’ve defended our rights. 
 
Vote YES to retain these Judges: Donohue, Wecht, Dougherty, Dubow, and Wojcik

 Vote YES to retain our Berks County Judges Geishauser and Barrett. 

Vote FOR Democratic Judges Brandon Neuman, Stella Tsai, and Eric Taylor.