In layman’s terms: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court stopped an anti-gun group that sought to bypass state law and enact local gun restrictions and bans.
On Tuesday, November 20, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court struck down a challenge to overturn state pre-emption of gun laws in a 6-1 decision from a majority Democrat panel, sustaining state law and protecting Second Amendment rights for residents in the state.
The case, known as Crawford, S., et al, Aplts. v. Commonwealth, is a challenge brought by private citizens along with the anti-gun group, Ceasefire Pennsylvania Education Fund, and the City of Philadelphia.
The decision was a response to an appeal from a divided en banc panel of the Commonwealth Court which dismissed the petition for failure to state claims upon which relief could be granted.
Pennsylvania state law has a preemption clause aimed at keeping municipalities from passing laws that deviate from state law and further infringing upon Second Amendment rights, and also preventing a massive collection of conflicting and confusing gun laws. It is these laws that the anti-gun group sought to strike down.
Notably, in the first five pages of its decision, the court had to explain basic civics and the workings of our governmental structures to the anti-gun group:
The domain of the judiciary is in the field of the administration of justice under the law; it interprets, construes[,] and applies the law. It is axiomatic that, in exercising our power of judicial review, we cannot use it as a means to substitute our own public policy judgments for those of the General Assembly.
In issuing its conclusion, the court simply quotes a 1966 case:
…the adequacy of the legislation to cope with the problem and the wisdom or the lack thereof on the part of the legislature in framing [the] legislation is not for us to determine. Such questions are solely for the legislature to determine and upon their province we must not encroach.
