Pennsylvania appeals court rules gun industry protection law unconstitutional

Cassie Maas | U. Pittsburgh School of Law, US
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 09:44:13 AM

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On appeal, the Superior Court found that the PLCAA was unconstitutional and violated the Tenth Amendment. The act was exercised under the Commerce Clause power, but the court stated the “proper constitutional inquiry” was whether under the Commerce Clause power Congress could “regulate state-based, tort lawsuits, filed in state courts, against the gun industry.”

The court found that Congress committed constitutional overreach in the PLCAA because the act regulated the inactivity of people who never took part in a commercial transaction in the gun industry. The plaintiffs in the case significantly did not purchase the gun that killed their son. The PLCAA encompassed almost any activity because it encompassed any activity in which any firearm was shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.

Because the act was a Congressional tort-reform bill, it reformed the state law of torts and converted it to federal law. The court noted that the PLCAA resembled the Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Like the Gun-Free School Zone Act, the PLCAA was unsustainable because it granted the gun industry immunity “regardless of how far removed from interstate commerce the harm arises.”

The court held that the PLCAA was unconstitutional in its entirety, writing that “The only portions of the PLCAA that do not offend the Constitution are its findings and purposes (in Section 7901) and a few definitions (in Section 7903).”

Trump administration revives talk of action on birthright citizenship

...“The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment was clearly intended to guarantee that emancipated slaves would properly be recognized as U.S. citizens,” said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “It is a fundamental misapplication of this clause that U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are granted automatic citizenship, much less the offspring of people who come here to simply give birth on American soil."

“If the president finally issues a long-awaited executive order limiting birthright citizenship, it will be up to the Supreme Court to resolve this issue once and for all,” Hauman added.