Kramer Levin Files Amicus Brief Supporting Petition Challenging Pennsylvania Laws Barring Gun Control Ordinances

On Sept. 30, 2022, Kramer Levin filed an amicus brief in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Crawford v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, No. 19 EAP 2022, on behalf of nine Philadelphia physicians and the Coalition of Trauma Centers for Firearm Injury Prevention. The brief was filed in support of an appeal by the City of Philadelphia, members of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh’s communities most affected by gun violence and Ceasefire Pennsylvania Education Fund from the dismissal of their petition against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Pennsylvania State Senate. The petition seeks a ruling that the provision of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act of 1995 and the Home Rule Charter and Optional Plans Law (the “preemption statutes”) that prevent municipalities from enacting gun safety ordinances violates their rights under the Pennsylvania constitution, including their right to “peace, safety and happiness.” On May 26, 2022, a divided panel of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court dismissed their petition in a 3-2 decision in which one of the three judges in the majority called for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to modify a prior decision that she believed required her to support dismissal.

Our clients are leaders of Philadelphia’s medical community and of its largest hospitals and trauma centers. They have long histories of caring for the victims of gun violence. Their amicus brief provides firsthand descriptions of the awful effects of gun violence on the victims, particularly young Black men, their families and their communities, the hospital staff, other patients in the hospitals, and the City as a whole. The physicians explain that gun violence is a public health crisis and Pennsylvania’s preemption statutes fundamentally undermine the constitutional rights of Philadelphians in low-income minority neighborhoods. The brief argues that “this is the rare case in which the Court’s decision will so directly affect whether countless young adults and children will live or die, whether they will grow up unharmed or suffer devastating injuries and psychological trauma, and whether entire neighborhoods will experience increasing peace and safety or suffer intensifying gun violence and terror.  The stakes can hardly be higher.”

Our clients include the Chair of Einstein Healthcare Network’s Department of Emergency Medicine, the Chief of Emergency Medicine at Penn Presbyterian, the Chief Medical Officer at Moss Rehab, the Surgeon-in-Chief of the Temple University Health System, the Chair of Emergency Medicine at Temple University’s School of Medicine, the Division Chief of Emergency Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Division Chief of Pediatric General, Thoracic, and Fetal Surgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Chief of the Division of Traumatology, Surgical Critical Care and Emergency Surgery at Penn Medicine, the Chair of the Department of Medicine at Penn Medicine, and one of the founders of the Coalition of Trauma Centers for Firearm Injury Prevention.

You can find the brief here.