The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has ruled that a Pennsylvania law barring payment of unemployment compensation benefits for an incarcerated employee does not apply to a person incarcerated on weekends only.
The Case
Daniel Harmon was a part-time employee at Brown's Shop Rite beginning on February 14, 2013. On December 18, 2013, he was convicted of driving with a suspended license and sentenced to a term of 60 days' imprisonment to be served on 30 consecutive weekends, beginning on March 14, 2014 and ending on August 7, 2014.
Harmon's employment with Brown's Shop Rite was terminated on March 24, 2014 due to an alleged violation of company policy unrelated to his incarceration. He then filed for benefits and received them for the week ending March 29, 2014 through the week ending July 26, 2014. The period included weeks when Harmon was serving his sentence of weekend incarceration.
On August 8, 2014 (after Harmon had completed serving his sentence), Andrea Quirk, an unemployment compensation claims examiner from the Erie Unemployment Compensation Service Center, conducted an investigation based on information received from “the cross match system” to determine whether Harmon was incarcerated due to a conviction in the Philadelphia County Prison System when he was receiving benefits.
Ms. Quirk did so because Section 402.6(a) of the Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation Law provides that, “[a]n employe shall not be eligible for payment of unemployment compensation benefits for any weeks of unemployment during which the employe is incarcerated after a conviction.” Upon Ms. Quirk's determination that Harmon had received benefits in weeks “during which” he was incarcerated, he was ordered to refund the $2,925.00 in benefits he had received. It also was determined that Harmon's failure to disclose his incarceration himself resulted in fault overpayment under Section 804(a) of the law such that he was assessed a penalty of $483.75 and disqualified from receiving benefits for an additional 17 penalty weeks.
A referee affirmed the service center's determination, the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review affirmed that Harmon was disqualified from receiving benefits, a court agreed, and the dispute reached the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Decision
The court reversed.
In its decision, the court rejected the board's position that the legislature intended Section 402.6 to disqualify claimants serving sentences of weekend-only confinement from receiving unemployment compensation benefits.
According to the court, its interpretation was consistent with the remedial purpose of the law and its view that disqualification provisions “should be narrowly construed” and a claimant must not be denied compensation unless the claimant was “unequivocally excluded by the plain language of these provisions.”
The court concluded, therefore, that the legislature intended “during,” as used in Section 402.6, to mean “throughout the duration of” such that the statute's disqualification provision applied only in circumstances where an individual was incarcerated due to a conviction for the entire week in which the individual claimed to be eligible to receive unemployment compensation benefits. It was error to find Harmon disqualified from receiving benefits on the basis of his sentence of weekend-only confinement, the court concluded.
The case is Harmon v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, No. 37 EAP 2017 (PA. April 26, 2019).
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].