Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court again upheld the law that lets employers move injured workers off total disability - even when the injury is decades old.
In a decision filed August 31, 2026, the court affirmed a ruling allowing Keystone Home Health Service to modify a worker's benefits after an impairment rating evaluation, or IRE - the exam that measures how much a work injury still limits a claimant.
The hook for carriers is the timeline. The worker was hurt on January 6, 1994, two years before IREs even existed in Pennsylvania. That did not save her benefits.
Keystone accepted the injury, first logged as a left wrist strain and later expanded to include nerve pain and a chronic pain condition, and she drew total disability benefits for years. Once she passed 104 weeks of benefits - the point that triggers an IRE - Keystone asked the state Bureau of Workers' Compensation to arrange one. A bureau-appointed physician examined her on May 3, 2023, and set her whole-person impairment at 5 percent.
That figure decided the case. Under Act 111, the 2018 law that rebuilt Pennsylvania's IRE system, a rating below 35 percent moves a claimant from total to partial disability. Partial benefits still pay, but they run against a 500-week cap. A workers' compensation judge made the change, effective the exam date.
The worker did not contest the exam or the findings. She attacked Act 111 itself, with three constitutional arguments the court has fielded many times.
She said the law cannot reach an injury from 1994, long before it existed. The court repeated its settled view that Act 111 applies to older injuries as long as the IRE happens after the law took effect in October 2018. Hers did.
She said the legislature gave away its lawmaking power by tying ratings to the American Medical Association's guides. The court disagreed, noting lawmakers adopted a specific edition as their own standard rather than handing off future choices.
She said lawmakers skipped the rule that a bill be considered on three separate days in each chamber. The court found the bill, H.B. 1840, was considered three times in each chamber. Only its printer number shifted with amendments; the bill number held.
The court affirmed on every point, leaving carriers a well-worn path to convert long-running total disability claims to capped partial benefits.
