Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, left, and City Solicitor Neil Grover spoke about the Commonwealth Court ruling Thursday afternoon.
Harrisburg officials claimed a partial victory in the battle over its gun laws Thursday, after a state court struck down a law that emboldened gun-rights groups to sue Pennsylvania municipalities over their firearms regulations.
The Commonwealth Court, in an almost unanimous opinion, ruled the law violated constitutional requirements that a bill must have a single subject and must not depart from its original purpose in the course of being passed into law.
In its opinion, written by Judge Robert Simpson, the court rejected the argument that the provisions of the bill fit within the single subject of “amending the crime code,” saying such a subject was overly broad.
It agreed with the law’s challengers—three state senators, two state representatives and the cities of Philadelphia, Lancaster and Pittsburgh—that the bill was altered beyond its original purpose when the firearms provisions were added.
City officials celebrated Thursday’s ruling, though with the lawsuits still pending, they could not say precisely how decisive a victory it was.
“We know it helps us,” Harrisburg city solicitor Neil Grover said Thursday. “We just have to identify exactly how.”
The law aided gun-rights groups and their members by granting them automatic standing to sue municipalities, relieving them of the difficult legal task of demonstrating local ordinances had harmed them.
It also allowed them to recoup legal and other costs if they prevailed, leading attorneys like Justin McShane, whose firm is one of the two suing Harrisburg, to threaten the city with tens of thousands of dollars in damages.
Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse referred to those threats on Thursday, saying one consequence of the ruling is that the city will not have to make such payments.
“Attorney McShane was rather vocal about trying to bankrupt the city through his enormous legal bills,” he said. “I am pleased to say we will not have to pay them.”
Harrisburg has been defending its gun laws against two separate lawsuits since January, spending upwards of $65,000 so far, with mixed results.
A county judge has barred the city from enforcing three of its ordinances, while a federal judge, siding with the city, has voided a $21,000 default that was awarded to one of the plaintiffs.
The state law, Act 192 of 2014, began as a two-page bill about the theft of metals including copper and aluminum, but later was amended to incorporate almost verbatim the provisions on challenging local gun laws from a separate, stalled bill.
Kim Stolfer, whose group Firearms Owners Against Crime helped craft the law and is one of the groups suing Harrisburg, described Thursday’s ruling as “one of the worst examples of tortured logic I’ve ever seen.”
He said the ruling dodged the question of the legality of local gun ordinances, and pointed to a partial dissent by Judge Patricia McCullough arguing the majority left legislators in the dark as to how to amend the crimes code.
Papenfuse, for his part, claimed the opinion sent the right message to legislators. “Hopefully, the result of this will be, in the future, the public will be protected from lawmaking in that sort of last-minute, hidden-from-view style,” he said.
Stolfer, however, disagreed, saying the bill had been well-publicized when it was being considered and the legislature had “overwhelmingly” voted to pass it. “The people of Pennsylvania wanted this,” he said.
