HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday, with a 6-1 ruling, upheld a Commonwealth Court decision to reject an injunction by welfare advocates who wanted to prevent the second termination of the state’s General Assistance cash welfare program while they legally challenged the re-elimination of the program on procedural issues.

“We find that the Commonwealth Court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Appellants failed to carry their burden with regard to the likelihood-of-success-on-the-merits aspect of the standard for preliminary injunctive relief,” wrote Chief Justice Tom Saylor in the majority opinion, joined by Justices Max Baer, Debra Todd, Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and Sallie Updyke Mundy. “That being the case, we need not address whether the court erred in finding that Appellants failed to demonstrate irreparable harm.”

The General Assembly in June voted to discontinue the General Assistance program, and Wolf reluctantly signed the legislation (House Bill 33, now Act 12 of 2019), which critics of the program termination argue contained other components — including Medicaid money for Philadelphia hospitals — that forced Wolf to sign the bill into law. Appellants claim that’s an example of unconstitutional “logrolling,” and have asked the courts to rule the legislation unconstitutional and force another resumption of the program.

As they did in 2012 when the program was first eliminated as part of the that year’s state budget, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia along with Disability Rights Pennsylvania filed a class action lawsuit in July in Commonwealth Court to prevent the ending of the program.

At that time, with the cash payments to approximately 12,000 low-income Pennsylvanians to end on Aug. 1, the legal action included a request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the cessation of the benefits.