The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to a Workers’ Compensation Act provision that requires incorporation of the most recent edition of guidelines from the American Medical Association for evaluating claimants’ impairment ratings. The justices granted allocatur March 22 in Protz v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Derry Area School District) to determine whether Section 306(a.2) of the act violates Article II, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution by delegating the legislature’s lawmaking authority to the AMA and allowing it to set the criteria for workers’ compensation adjudications. The high court also agreed to review whether the Commonwealth Court incorrectly remanded Mary Ann Protz’s case to apply the fourth edition of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment.
The lower court ruled Section 306(a.2) unconstitutional Sept. 18, 2015, in a deeply divided en banc decision, reasoning that the requirement that impairment ratings be determined under the most recent edition of the AMA Guides left “unchecked discretion completely in the hands of a private entity.”
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