{"id":180150,"date":"2026-04-30T11:07:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T11:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/180150\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T11:07:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T11:07:06","slug":"the-pennsylvania-human-rights-commission-cannot-get-stuff-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/180150\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission cannot ‘get stuff done’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pennsylvania doesn\u2019t have a state human relations commission any more \u2014 not one that functions, anyway.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1955 and led by a board that is supposed to draw from both major parties, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) is charged with enforcing state laws that prohibit discrimination. The governor appoints commissioners, who must be confirmed by the state senate. Only six may belong to the same party.<\/p>\n

Since Governor Josh Shapiro took office in 2023, he has declined to fill any of the vacancies on the eleven-member commission. Now, the total membership has diminished to five. Short of a quorum, it is now impossible for the commission to even hold a meeting. The laws against discrimination are still on the books, but the main body charged with resolving cases that don\u2019t settle voluntarily is no longer operating.<\/p>\n

It is, perhaps, clich\u00e9 to say so, but if a Republican governor allowed the PHRC to lapse into uselessness through his inaction, we would never hear the end of it from the mainstream press. Yet our Democratic governor has done exactly this and his inability to even nominate someone to fill the vacancies now means the PHRC is quite unable to \u201cget shit done.\u201d<\/p>\n

We wrote about this a year ago<\/a>, when there were only four vacancies and the commission was short-handed, but functioning. Now there are six, and it\u2019s moribund. With only five members remaining \u2014 all Democrats \u2014 the system is breaking down.<\/p>\n

Why has this happened? No one in the governor\u2019s office is saying, but the news this month that the PHRC\u2019s executive director, Chad Dion Lassiter, was leaving (or being forced out) after a dispute about \u201cimproper expenses<\/a>\u201d adds a further layer of mystery and seeming ineptitude.<\/p>\n

In a time of declining trust across institutions but especially across government, it is essential that the state work harder than ever to show that they are worthy of trust and that they will deliver on their promises. Instead, we have a governmental body that doesn\u2019t even have enough people there to meet the legal minimum requirements of functionality.<\/p>\n

It is also worth noting that the PHRC\u2019s mission has shifted significantly from its original purpose. As we noted earlier this week, Lassiter describes his work as the Executive Director as that of a social justice advocate<\/a>. The anti-discrimination mission the PHRC was established to pursue has morphed into a taxpayer-funded advocacy group for the excesses of Ibram Kendi-style social justice warriors. Perhaps this hard-left shift explains why Shapiro has been unable to find anyone \u2014 and especially any Republican \u2014 to join the commission?<\/p>\n

If you asked Governor Shapiro whether anti-discrimination laws were important to him, he would surely say that they were. But his actions \u2014 or inaction \u2014 with regard to the PHRC cast doubt on that. Shapiro should do the bare minimum and nominate commissioners \u2014 including some Republicans \u2014 to fill the vacancies and get this agency working again as the law originally intended. Or, if he really thinks the commission is not worth making an effort for, he should ask the legislature to disband it. At a cost of $14M annually, maybe a little less government is a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania doesn\u2019t have a state human relations commission any more \u2014 not one that functions, anyway. Founded in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27059,2258,33,2311,28,30,76846,29],"class_list":["post-180150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-civil-rights","tag-democrats","tag-josh-shapiro","tag-must-read","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-human-relations-commission","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}