[J-24-2021]
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA
WESTERN DISTRICT
BAER, C.J., SAYLOR, TODD, DONOHUE, DOUGHERTY, WECHT, MUNDY, JJ.
APARTMENT ASSOCIATION OF
METROPOLITAN PITTSBURGH, INC.,
Appellee
v.
THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH,
Appellant
No. 26 WAP 2020
Appeal from the Order of the Commonwealth Court entered March 12, 2020 at No. 528 CD 2018, affirming the Order of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County entered March 13, 2018 at No. GD-16-000596.
ARGUED: April 13, 2021
OPINION
JUSTICE WECHT DECIDED: OCTOBER 21, 2021
Drawing fine lines in loose sand is among this Court’s principal functions. In Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association v. City of Pittsburgh,1 we were invited to draw just such a line, locating each of two Pittsburgh ordinances on the correct side of it.
The line in question separates the Commonwealth’s interest in honoring home rule2 for those municipalities that avail themselves of it from the General Assembly’s countervailing effort to limit home-rule impositions upon business.3 This Court held that the City of Pittsburgh’s Paid Sick Days Act (“Sick Days Act”) fell within home-rule authority, while the Safe and Secure Buildings Act (“Buildings Act”) exceeded that authority. In explaining our ruling, we acknowledged the difficulty of drawing a sharp line in this area, where there are as many permutations of the inquiry as there are ordinances that might be crafted.4 In finding that one ordinance passed muster while the other did not, we “bracket[ed] the gray area between what is and is not allowed by the limitations upon business regulation imposed by the [HRC’s] Business Exclusion.”5 But the gray area remains. Now we consider yet another variation.
Here, we hold that the HRC’s Business Exclusion precludes a Pittsburgh ordinance that proscribes source-of-income discrimination in various housing-related contexts. Accordingly, we affirm the order of the Commonwealth Court, which reached the same conclusion.
1 211 A.3d 810 (Pa. 2019) (hereinafter, “PRLA”).
2 Home rule derives from the Pennsylvania Constitution, which provides in relevant part:
Municipalities shall have the right and power to frame and adopt home rule
charters. . . . A municipality which has a home rule charter may exercise
any power or perform any function not denied by this Constitution, by its
home rule charter or by the General Assembly at any time.
PA. CONST. art. IX, § 2. The General Assembly codified and circumscribed this authority in the Home Rule Charter and Optional Plans Law, Act of Dec. 19, 1996, P.L. 1158, No. 177, codified as amended at 53 Pa.C.S. §§ 2901-3171 (hereinafter “the HRC”).
3 See 53 Pa.C.S. § 2962(f) (“Regulation of business and employment”) (hereinafter the “Business Exclusion”).
4 Cf. PRLA, 211 A.3d at 832 (“[I]t is impossible for any legislature to anticipate the innumerable ways in which any given ordinance might affect a given business’s receipts or complicate its administration.”).
5 Id. at 837.
