The threat of gun violence concerns many Americans. State legislatures often have failed to keep pace with these concerns in enacting gun control laws. (However, these regulations must clear a high bar to comply with the Second Amendment, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court.) Some citizens have hoped that cities and counties can fill the void by passing ordinances to curb guns in their communities.
As a recent Pennsylvania case illustrated, this may not work. The state prohibits local governments from regulating gun possession, ownership, or transfer. A group of citizens and the city of Philadelphia recently went to court to challenge these “firearms preemption laws.” Their arguments failed in the lower court, and last week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously ruled against them.
The lawsuit raised three main arguments, two of which involved the Pennsylvania Constitution. First, the claimants alleged that the firearms preemption laws violated their constitutional right to enjoy and defend life and liberty, which they interpreted to include a right to protect themselves from gun violence through local regulations. The Supreme Court rejected their attempt to infer this type of right from the constitutional provision. It then rejected a similar argument invoking the “state-created danger” doctrine. A branch of substantive due process, this doctrine may apply when the state creates or exacerbates a danger that results in someone else harming a citizen. The Supreme Court found that an exposure to threatened or potential harm does not trigger the doctrine.
Finally, the plaintiffs claimed that the firearms preemption laws interfered with the public health responsibility delegated to Philadelphia by the state. (They interpreted “public health” to include gun control.) The Supreme Court disagreed after reviewing the text of the laws at issue. It noted that the state had delegated the duties to protect public health and prevent related problems. According to the Supreme Court, these duties did not extend to gun control.
The case thus ends here, leaving the plaintiffs to pursue their goals through the political process to the extent possible. More broadly, the decision could affect strategies to implement local gun control in other states. Most have enacted firearms preemption laws that roughly parallel the laws challenged in Pennsylvania. While this decision does not dictate decisions by other state supreme courts, it could influence their analysis of similar claims.
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