The Pennsylvania Department of Health withdrew a proposed 502-page rewrite of its communicable disease regulations on Friday, four days after the public comment period closed and amid staunch opposition from Republican lawmakers.
The proposal would have overhauled Chapter 27 of the state health code, which governs disease reporting and control. It went before the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, which received thousands of negative comments; officials said regulatory packages typically draw five or fewer comments.
Republicans called the proposal a power grab advanced without legislative approval. Party leaders said it would lead to quarantines, mask mandates, and warrantless searches.
“It gives them unlimited power,” Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R) said earlier this week. “This is such a government overreach, and I find it very, very scary.”
Much of the criticism centered on an amendment allowing the department or a local health authority to enter an apartment, building, health care facility, school, college or other location as necessary for an investigation. A coalition of 85 state legislators also raised concerns about provisions on state collection of vaccination information and health officials’ access to medical records. Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R) and other Republican leaders compared the entry provision to entering a home without a warrant.
Pittman called the withdrawal a tremendous “victory for the grassroots efforts of Pennsylvanians,” adding that, “The people of Pennsylvania have been loud and clear in making their voices heard.” He said Senate Republicans will not allow the executive actions seen during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to be put in place again.
Rep. Kathy Rapp, Republican chair of the House Health Committee, said public pressure was “too loud, too clear and too powerful for unelected bureaucrats to ignore.” Before the withdrawal, Rapp led 85 House members in a 33-page comment letter criticizing the package’s provisions on medical privacy, school access without parental consent, the lack of a warrant requirement for private residences and expanded isolation powers.
A group of Republican legislators on the senate side separately sent a 40-page letter to the IRRC. They argued that approving the rules would place residents’ fundamental rights under administrative discretion that is harder for the legislature and courts to review.
Department Press Secretary Neil Ruhland said the agency received a “historically high volume of feedback” and plans to file revised language once that input is incorporated. The department had defended the changes earlier in the week, describing the proposal as an effort to modernize regulations that are about 25 years old, allowing electronic submission of information and eliminating some duplicative reporting.
A spokesperson for Gov. Josh Shapiro said the governor did not personally propose the regulations, and that misconstruing the changes to scare Pennsylvanians would be “inaccurate and disingenuous.”
The PA Family Institute and a civil rights law firm also filed formal comments opposing the proposal. The department has said it intends to rewrite and resubmit the regulations, which will again go through IRRC review.
