In related cases, City of Philadelphia v. Armstrong, 271 A.3d 555 (Pa.Cmwlth. 2022) and Crawford v. Commonwealth, 277 A.3d 649 (Pa.Cmwlth. 2022), Ahuja successfully broke a 26-year blockade in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court that had repeatedly interpreted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s opinion in Ortiz v. Commonwealth, 681 A.2d 154 (Pa. 1996), as barring any local regulation of firearms. Ahuja represented the Philadelphia in Armstrong, defending an ordinance that would require firearms owners to report a lost or stolen firearm to the police. A coalition of high-profile amici including several Pennsylvania municipalities and gun violence organizations lent their support to Ahuja, who won a groundbreaking concurrence in Armstrong that was later adopted in Crawford where President Judge Emerita Bonnie Leadbetter explained that, were she “not bound by controlling precedent … she would affirm the trial court” and “urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the breadth of the Ortiz doctrine and allow for local restrictions narrowly tailored to local necessities.”

Ahuja is now set to argue before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court regarding the scope and constitutionality of Section 6120 in Crawford, again with the backing of several Pennsylvania municipalities and co-counsel The Public Interest Law Center. It will be the first time in 27 years that the court will be hearing any case on this statute that is having life and death consequences for residents across the commonwealth.

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