Laird v. Department of Public Welfare

OPINION

Justice BAER.

In this appeal by allowance, we are called to decide whether adopted children, whose adoptions were procured through a Pennsylvania-licensed, private adoption agency in the 1990s, are eligible to receive adoption assistance subsidies retroactive to the dates of the children’s adoptions and prospectively through their eighteenth birthdays, despite not applying for those subsidies until 2007. For the reasons that follow, we hold that the children are not eligible for any adoption subsidies, either retroactively or prospectively, and thus reverse the Commonwealth Court.

I.…