By Rey Panaligan After more than four hours of oral arguments on the issue of salaries of nurses employed in government institutions, the Supreme Court (SC) early Tuesday evening decided to require parties to submit their memoranda in preparation for the handing down of its ruling. Ordered to submit memoranda in 20 days are the Office of the Solicitor General for the government and the lawyers of the petitioners Ang Nars Party-List and the Public Services Labor Independent Confederation. In their petition filed in 2015, the petitioners wanted the SC to compel the government to implement Section 32 of Republic Act No. 9173, known as the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002, that sets the minimum base pay of nurses in government institution, like hospitals and military camps, at Grade 15 or P29,010 a month. Before RA 9173 could be implemented, however, Congress issued Joint Resolution No. 4 (JR No. 4) that allowed the President to modify the compensation and classification of civilian personnel, among other things. The resolution paved the way for the issuance in 2009 of Executive Order No. 811, which among other things, reduced the base pay of nurses from Salary Grade 15 to Salary Grade 11 (P20,179) while the entry base pay is Salary Grade 10 (P18,718). During the arguments, the petitioners told the SC justices that JR No. 4 cannot repeal Section 32 of RA 9173 by a joint resolution of Congress. “Executive orders, administrative orders or circulars are not laws within the ambit of the Constitution,” lawyer Sharon Faith Paquiz pointed out in behalf of the petitioners. Paquiz said that while JR No. 4 attained the status and effect of a law, it did not attain the status of a bill under the purview of Article VI of the Constitution which requires that every bill passed by Congress should only have only one subject expressed in its title and should pass three readings in Congress. “Even assuming a Joint Resolution can become a law, it did not follow the one-subject rule for its title,” she said. Solicitor General Jose C. Calida, on the other hand, asked the SC justices to dismiss the petition with an argument that the High Court has no jurisdiction over the issues which involve exclusive legislative power of Congress. Calida said: "The repeal of Section 32 of RA 9173 through Joint Resolution No.4 by Congress constitutes a political question beyond the pale of judicial review.... The intricacies of the lawmaking process are inherent to Congress alone. The passage of laws, except the people’s direct power of initiative and referendum, rests solely with Congress." On the issue of whether a joint resolution can repeal a law stemming from a bill need not be resolved anymore as "it is not the business of the courts of law to impose their judgment on what has been invariably laid out in the Constitution as the prerogative of Congress alone," he added. During the interpellation, some justices said that the petitioners should have gone to Congress instead of the SC for relief. "Can this Court compel, assuming that you are correct, Congress or the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) to fund Section 12 of this Act? Can we compel Congress to appropriate funds?" Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio asked. “Insofar as the funding is concerned, it is within the ambit of Congress,” Paquiz replied. Considering that Congress has the final say on issues of appropriations, “why go here (SC) and not to Congress?” Carpio against asked. When asked by Associate Justice Marvic Mario Victor F. Leoneon what has been done by the petitioners on the issue, Paquiz said her group has filed a resolution in Congress but it was informed that the law could not be implemented for lack of funds. In the guidelines on oral arguments, the SC wanted to be clarified on whether JR No. 4 has repealed Section 32 of the Nursing Act, whether the joint resolution followed the procedure of a bill passing into a law and whether it has become a law if it followed the procedure. The guidelines also stated that “if Joint Resolution No. 4 has not repealed Section 32 of RA 9173, whether the Supreme Court can compel the respondents to pay the nurses their compensation under Salary Grade 15 as prescribed in Section 32 of RA 9173.”