While leaving open future action from the state legislature, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court upheld Philadelphia’s soda tax Wednesday.

The tax, signed into law in 2016, was levied by the city to fund additional education investments. It was then challenged by restaurant industry groups and local business people as a violation of a 1932 state law that granted the city the right to tax anything without a state levy.

House Bill 2071, known as the Workplace Violence Prevention Act, aims to allow employers to implement safeguards that they deem necessary in their business by preventing local jurisdictions from enacting measures that would stop them from doing so. Rep. Todd Stephens (R-Montgomery), the bill’s prime sponsor, says employers have a right to protect themselves.

However opponents contend the bill is aimed squarely against Philadelphia’s efforts to ban bulletproof barriers in certain businesses – namely “stop-and-gos”.

A divided panel of the Commonwealth Court sided with a group of gun owners in an opinion Friday in a case deciding if state gun regulation preempted municipal regulation of whether guns can be carried in a local park.

 

In the case of Firearm Owners Against Crime v. Lower Merion Twp., the court held with a 2-1 opinion that state regulation did in fact preempt Lower Merion’s attempt to keep firearms out of a municipal park.