Ban on carrying firearms openly in Philadelphia is unconstitutional, Pa. appeals court rules. But judges stop short of repealing the law.

The Pennsylvania Superior Court has ruled that a ban on openly carrying a firearm without a permit in Philadelphia is unconstitutional, but stopped short of repealing the law.

In a 2-1 decision Monday, the majority found that a state law requiring a license to openly carry a firearm in Philadelphia, while exempting the rest of Pennsylvania from the requirement, violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The ruling came in response to an appeal filed by the Defender Association of Philadelphia on behalf of Riyadh Sumpter, who was arrested after police officers noticed him walking down the street with a handgun visible from his waistband. Sumpter was sentenced to 12 months of probation in 2022 for openly carrying a firearm without a license.

The judges analyzed the Philadelphia-specific requirement “as applied” to Sumpter, which means that the ruling keeps the permit requirement on the books, but vacated Sumpter’s sentence.

But the majority opinion does not rely on the specifics of the case, and instead makes sweeping statements about the Second Amendment as it applies to the permit requirement in Philadelphia.

“The right to keep and bear arms outside the home is a fundamental right protected by the Second Amendment,” Judge Victor P. Stabile wrote for the majority, adding that the permit requirement “places persons within the city of Philadelphia at a special disadvantage in the exercise of their Second Amendment right.”

Superior Court President Judge Anne E. Lazarus, a Philadelphia Democrat, joined Stabile, a Cumberland County Republican, in the majority.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office argued against vacating Sumpter‘s conviction, saying it is constitutional for the state to provide elected prosecutors with additional law enforcement tools to combat crime.

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But past cases “foreclose any argument” that adding tools to address crime is a “sufficiently compelling interest to support an impingement of the fundamental right to keep and bear arms in the city of Philadelphia,” the majority wrote

The Defender Association did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

Renee Garcia, Philadelphia’s solicitor, said in a statement that the city was disappointed with the decision.

“We are communicating with the District Attorney’s Office about their next steps in this matter,” Garcia said.

In reaching the decision, Lazarus and Stabile relied on U.S. Supreme Court rulings from recent years, such as the 2022 ruling that expanded the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.

That ruling struck down a New York state law that required people to show the need to carry a gun to get a concealed-carry permit.

The sole dissenter in Sumpter’s case, Judge Timika Lane, a Philadelphia Democrat, wrote in her rebuttal that her colleagues mischaracterized the issue. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t strike down the New York law because there is a right to carry without a license, Lane wrote. Instead the ruling took issue with the discretionary nature of the New York licensing system.

Sumpter, Lane said, would have a stronger argument had he applied for a license and was denied. But that did not happen.

“Rather, it appears that Sumpter simply carried a handgun on a public street in Philadelphia without regard to the requirement that he obtain a license before doing so,” the judge wrote in the dissenting opinion.

Even though the narrow ruling only applies to Sumpter’s case, it led to both celebration and apprehension.

The ruling made it clear that Philadelphia residents were being treated differently from the rest of the commonwealth, said Val Finnell, Pennsylvania director for Gun Owners of America. The Pennsylvania General Assembly, he said, needed to repeal the law.

“The rules have to be uniform across the state,” he said. “We cannot have a patchwork quilt of gun laws across Pennsylvania.”

In contrast, Adam Garber, executive director of CeasefirePA, said that he hoped the decision was appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

“The idea that anyone can carry a firearm around the city, at the subway, at the pool, in the parks, it’s a recipe for potential harm and dangers,” Garber said.

Staff writer Rodrigo Torrejón contributed to this article.