A state superior court judge who asked that she not be forced to take the pay raise passed in 2005 lost her petition before the Commonwealth Court this week.

The court, in a nine-page opinion issued yesterday, ruled that Judge Joan Orie Melvin, who is up for a retention vote this November, must take the pay raise, which increased her salary from $150,903 to $162,100.

The judge who wrote the court's opinion, James Gardner Colins, spoke harshly in it.

"Petitioner may proselytize ad infinitum against the level of judicial salaries during her retention campaign," he wrote. "However as a judge she should not be filing specious complaints in judicial forums."

He went on to say that she is free to donate all of her pay raise to the charity of her choice.

"However as a judicial officer she is not free to ignore the Pennsylvania Constitution so as to create a two-tiered system of judicial compensation."

Judge Orie Melvin filed the petition against the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts and the acting state treasurer, seeking an injunction that would prohibit them from paying her the increased salary.

The AOPC, though, objected, claiming that its job is to pay salaries to judges, not to alter them.

In the ruling, Judge Collins said the Supreme Court had already commented on the matter in the past, in a 1989 decision in which it ruled that "there cannot be 'different adequate compensation for different members of the same court.'"