Free Republic

Friday's Commonwealth Court opinion declares Act 77 of 2019 unconstitutional, though an appeal is expected by the Department of State. A statewide court says Pennsylvania’s expansive two-year-old mail-in voting law is unconstitutional, agreeing with challenges by Republicans who soured on mail-in voting after then-President Donald Trump began baselessly attacking it as rife with fraud in 2020′s campaign. According to a Commonwealth Court filing released Friday, the court ruled that Act 77, allowing residents to vote by mail in Pennsylvania, violates Article VII, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania constitution. The Commonwealth Court denied the Pa. Department of State acting secretary's application...

A Pennsylvania appeals court has struck down the commonwealth’s landmark 2019 mail-in voting law. In an opinion from Judge Mary Leavitt Friday morning, Commonwealth Court found that the law, which allows all Pennsylvanians to vote by mail without an excuse, was unconstitutional, agreeing with 14 House Republican lawmakers who filed suit against the law in September.

(WHTM) – The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has found the commonwealth’s no-excuse mail-in voting law, Act 77, is unconstitutional. According to court documents, 14 members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives filed a petition to block the 2019 law that would allow any qualified voter to vote by mail.The law allowed voters to submit a ballot by mail up to 50 days before an election and placed voters on a list to permanently receive a ballot application by mail. It also established 15 more days to register to vote and extended amil=in and absentee submission deadlines. Act 77 also outlined...

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has affirmed the Commonwealth Court's decision and vacated the mask mandate issued by the acting state health secretary. This means that the mask mandate has been dropped, effective immediately. The opinion is expected to be released at a later date. Judge Saylor did not participate in the vote. The legality of the order requiring masks in K-12 schools and child care facilities went before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court earlier this week, as the two sides argued their respective positions before the justices Wednesday in Philadelphia.

In a one-page decision issued Friday afternoon, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that an order that has kept the state’s schoolchildren masked for months must be voided. The decision upholds an earlier ruling by Commonwealth Court, which found the masking order issued in August by Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam is unenforceable. Beam lacked authority to require that students wear face masks while in school in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, the two state courts concluded. The mask mandate was challenged in court by a bloc that included Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Republican who...

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on one of the most divisive issues facing the state at the moment – the state-imposed mandate that children must wear face masks while in school to protect against COVID-19. Yet the nearly hour-long session in Philadelphia wasn’t really about the virus or controlling its spread or whether wearing those masks is an effective response to the pandemic. Instead, the arguments centered on whether the state’s Acting Secretary of Health, Alison Beam, had the legal authority to issue the mask mandate. As Justice Debra Todd observed, the high court was being tasked with conducting...

While Bill Cosby may have walked out of prison a free man yesterday, the courts saw to it that he endured two criminal trials and spent years in prison during his appeals.On June 30, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed the criminal sexual assault conviction against Bill Cosby, concluding that the 2005 decision by District Attorney Bruce Castor not to prosecute Cosby for the alleged sexual assault of Andrea Constand barred Pennsylvania from later charging Cosby with that crime. Given the avalanche of allegations that the former actor and comedian drugged and then sexually assaulted scores of young women, Wednesday’s decision...

As a general matter, it has always been my view that when you begin a legal argument with a “The Sky is Falling” pronouncement, where the “warning” tells the Court nothing that it does not know already, you are actually insulting the intelligence of the Judge — or in this case the Justices — by wasting time with useless theatrics. This was my reaction to one of the sentences set forth in the opening of the Response filed by the Pennsylvania state defendants to the Emergency Application for Injunctive Relief filed by Congressman Mike Kelly and other Plaintiffs earlier today....

The PA Supreme Court dismisses the case brought by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly that sought to overturn last year’s law creating no-excuse mail voting and to throw out those mail ballots cast in this election. This is the case the Commonwealth Court had earlier blocked certification in.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Saturday evening reversed a lower court’s block on certifying the state’s elections issued Friday night, dismissing with prejudice a lawsuit brought by Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives that sought to have the results nullified over constitutional concerns about a 2019 change in absentee ballot rules. The lead plaintiffs in the case are Rep. Mike Kelly and Sean Parnell.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed with prejudice a Republican lawsuit seeking to invalidate more than 2.5 million votes cast by mail in the general election, the latest in a string of legal defeats for the GOP as President Trump fails to undo his losses in key battleground states. Justices on the state high court ruled unanimously late Saturday that Republican petitioners waited too long to file their suit challenging Act 77, the 2019 law that established universal mail voting in Pennsylvania. Trump allies had asked the court to invalidate all votes cast by mail in the most recent election or...

The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court has once again shown its contempt for a free and fair election.The PA Supreme Court on Monday ruled that mail-in/ballots with no dates or handwritten names/addresses on the outer envelopes can be counted.The Trump campaign challenged the decision of the Philadelphia County Board of Elections to count 8,320 mail-in/absentee ballots arguing the voters failed to handwrite their name, address or the date (in some cases a combination of all three) on the outer envelope.Trump’s legal team argued that the General Assembly set forth in the Election Code the requirements for how a qualified elector can...

Ronna McDaniel (GOP Chairwoman) Huge news! The Pennyslvania Supreme Court just handed us a big victory, throwing out a left-wing lawsuit to allow ballots to be counted AFTER Election Day. We will not let Democrats destroy the integrity of our elections by opening the door to voter fraud!

HARRISBURG, PA (May 31, 2019) -- Today, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court issued a significant 53-page majority opinion in the criminal appeal of Commonwealth v. Hicks. Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF) filed an important coalition amicus brief cited by the Court supporting Hicks in December of 2017, alongside Firearms Owners Against Crime (FOAC) and seven Members of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly. The Court’s decision, concurring opinions, and the FPC/FPF amicus brief can be viewed at www.firearmspolicy.org/legal. At issue was whether someone’s carrying of a firearm could be used as reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct, and thus justification...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania Legislature on Friday produced a new proposed map of the state's congressional districts, three weeks after the state Supreme Court declared the former map unconstitutional. The proposal drafted by House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati would make widespread changes, eliminating dozens of municipal and county divisions while keeping nearly 70 percent of residents in their old districts. They forwarded the map and other materials to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who has until Thursday to tell the justices if he supports it. If not, the court has...

GOP lawmakers in Pennsylvania are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop a state court’s decision that found Pennsylvania’s congressional map was unconstitutionally gerrymandered. Lawyers for Republican state legislative leaders argued in a court filing Thursday that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violated a clause that allows state legislatures to handle congressional redistricting, The Associated Press reported. The filing asks the Supreme Court to put a hold on the lower court's ruling while it considers Republicans' argument, according to the AP. The state court ruled earlier this week that Pennsylvania’s congressional map was gerrymandered to the point that it was unconstitutional....

Pennsylvania's Republican-leaning congressional map is illegal and must be redrawn, according to a 4-3 ruling by the Democratic-leaning state Supreme Court. The 3-page ruling was released this afternoon. The order says the state’s 2011 map “plainly and palpably violates the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” The ruling directs the GOP-controlled Legislature to redraw the map and submit it to Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, by Feb. 9 and the court for approval by Feb. 15. If lawmakers or the governor miss those deadlines, the court would draw its own map “based on the evidentiary record developed.” Gerrymandering foes urged...

Those high-profile gubernatorial and congressional races in Virginia, New Jersey and New York got most of the headlines, but the genuinely revealing contests may well have been some of the down-ballot contests held in Maine, Georgia and Pennsylvania. In Maine, a referendum to repeal the state's recently enacted gay marriage law won 52-48 percent. despite a massive outpouring of resources by gay rights groups. Gay marriage advocates spent an estimated $4 milion defending the law, while opponents reportedly spent about $2.5 million. Turnout was higher than expected for an off-year election, according to Maine officials, and there were about 100,000...