Nicole Molinaro and Josh Fleitman: Supreme Court Empowers Pennsylvania to End Domestic Violence Murders

Among the many decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, a recent ruling offers welcome news for those seeking to protect victims of domestic violence and others from fatal shootings. It also shines as a beacon of hope for even stronger safety protections in the future.

The decision was in US v. Rahimi, which challenged the constitutionality of the ban on people subject to civil restraining orders from owning firearms. In a nearly unanimous 8-1 decision on June 21, the Supreme Court upheld the federal law as consistent with the Second Amendment and the nation’s “historic tradition” of gun regulation. The decision also inherently reaffirmed Pennsylvania’s 2018 Act 79, a historic, bipartisan, and life-saving law that disarms perpetrators of domestic violence.

These policies are not intended to prevent a purely theoretical danger. Over the past 10 years, more than 1,400 Pennsylvanians have died in domestic violence-related incidents – the majority by firearm.

The combination of guns and domestic violence is a matter of life and death. And in this case, the Supreme Court chose life.

But perhaps more importantly, the 8-1 majority opinion used language that makes clear how constitutional another priority gun safety law is: extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs—often called “scare laws”). This life-saving and widely popular legislation would allow a judge, after reviewing the evidence and hearing testimony from law enforcement or immediate family members, to order temporary firearms restrictions for an individual deemed to pose a credible and imminent risk to themselves or others.

House Bill 1018 passed the Pennsylvania House of Representatives with bipartisan support more than a year ago. Gov. Josh Shapiro has said he would sign it if it made it to his desk. But it remains untouched in the Pennsylvania State Senate, whose leaders, Sens. Kim Ward and Joe Pittman, hail from Westmoreland County.

The Supreme Court’s majority opinion in United States v. Rahimi, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, stated clearly: “When a court has found that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of others, that individual may be temporarily disarmed pursuant to the Second Amendment.”

It’s a perfect summary of what an ERPO does and how they use due process to protect people from themselves and others.

And the highest court in the country has just clarified that ERPOs are constitutional.

Senate leaders — including Sen. Lisa Baker, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and has taken no action on House Bill 1018 since its bipartisan passage in the Pennsylvania House — have cited concerns about the policy’s constitutionality as the reason for filibustering it. When pressed to schedule at least one hearing on the bill to allow survivors, law enforcement and others to testify on its merits, Baker also cited Ward and Pittman’s lack of support for moving forward.

Now that the United States Supreme Court has corrected these inaccurate assertions and declared that ERPOs are indeed constitutional, we once again call on Ward and Pittman to immediately support Baker in scheduling a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and d ‘a vote on bipartisan House Bill 1018. They should then schedule a vote in the Senate and urge their colleagues to vote yes, showing Pennsylvanians that the General Assembly can still make bipartisan progress on public safety.