Then I'll do your homework for you.
PENNSYLVANIA: Curtis v. Kline, 20 Fam. L. Rep. (BNA) 1232 (Pa. Jan. 11, 1995).
In a stunning decision completely at odds with every other state's decision on the issue, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared that its college support statute was unconstitutional.
In 1993, the Pennsylvania legislature enacted 23 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. 4327(a), which provides that a court may order either or both parents who are separated, divorced, unmarried, or otherwise subject to an existing support obligation to provide for educational costs of their child. This statute was enacted in direct response to Blue v. Blue, 532 Pa. 521, 616 A.2d 628 (1992), in which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to recognize a duty requiring a parent to provide college education support because no such duty had been imposed by the legislature. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because there was no rational basis to discriminate between divorced parents and nondivorced parents in their obligation to provide for a college education for their children. Curtis v. Kline, 20 Fam. L. Rep. (BNA) 1232 (Pa. Jan. 11, 1995).
You can read the decision here.
http://www.peak.org/~jedwards/pen1.txt
The one thing the decision did NOT DO is invalidate the law, which is still on the books pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The appeal is based on
P.O.P.S. v. Gardner, (9th Cir. 1993) 998 F. 2d. 764. in which the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a child support order based on a Washington State statute ( Chapter 26.19 RCW ) which is similiar to that of Pennsylvania and does not REQUIRE but advises guidelines for post secondary educational expenses in Child Support orders.
The problem with some people reading court decisions is that they tend to read what they want into the decision. and the problem with the 1995 decision of the Pennsylvania Surpreme Court is that while it ruled that the plaintiff in the underlying action did not have to pay for post-secondary education, it also did not specifically rule that any post secondary support statute would be so considered as unconstitutional.
And, of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with the point of this entire thread. Which is Utah.
Now, if you would have researched the decision in Kline, based on the U.S. Supreme Court's Knight decision, you would have noticed a small, innocent little paragraph at the bottom of the decision.
The Polites Court split 5-4, the majority opinion finding that the intervening decisions cited did not create new law effective to alter the law controlling the previous judgment. The majority found at 364 U.S. 433 that it did not have to find that “relief under Rule 60(b) is inflexibly to be withheld when there has later been a clear and authoritative change in governing law.” The dissent at 364 U.S. 437-440 found that FRCP 60(b) can be used to grant relief from a judgment when a subsequent court decision changes the controlling law.
This split decision left the issue open and the circuits have since split as to whether and what extraordinary circumstances are necessary for a subsequent decision to provide grounds for relief from judgment. An opportunity to clarify this issue might have occurred in Fiore v. White, (2001) 148 L. Ed. 2d. 629, 121 S. Ct. 712 (Fiore II), but the Pennsylvania court answered that its subsequent decision did not change the state law, it was the correct reading of the law at the time of the previous conviction.
The Kline decision, in light of Polites, although effectively invalidating the statute now in effect for Kline, does not automatically invalidate orders issued before the decision.
Which, for purposes of this thread, simply means that either the Pennsylvania laws will be rewritten to reflect more closely Chapter 26.19 RCW (Wash) or the decision will be overturned on appeal.
What it does NOT mean is that every order currently issued for post-secondary education expense sharing in Support Orders is automatically invalid.
