How have Philadelphia police and the district attorney enforced open‑carry cases since the 2025 ruling?
Executive summary
Since the Pennsylvania Superior Court’s June 2025 decision in Commonwealth v. Sumpter vacated a Philadelphia open‑carry conviction as unconstitutional “as applied,” enforcement has been uneven: courts have limited the reach of §6108 in specific cases while Philadelphia police have continued to rely on the city’s licensing regime and traditional stop/arrest practices pending higher‑court resolution and guidance from law‑enforcement groups [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Court outcome and its practical scope
The Superior Court held that penalizing a person for openly carrying a firearm in Philadelphia without a license violated constitutional protections in the Sumpter case and vacated his sentence, but the court framed the ruling “as applied” rather than striking the statute on its face, meaning prosecutors can still bring §6108 charges and defendants must challenge them in individual cases or seek a facial ruling from a higher court [1] [2] [5].
2. Philadelphia police behavior after the ruling
Philadelphia police retain the operational tools to stop, question and arrest people seen with firearms and continue to instruct officers that Pennsylvania’s licensing rules—especially the longstanding special rule for the “city of the first class”—remain a basis for enforcement until the law is definitively repealed or overturned statewide, a posture reflected in the department’s ongoing permit unit guidance and statutory references requiring presentation of a license on demand [3] [4].
3. The District Attorney’s posture and prosecutorial choices
The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office explicitly resisted vacating Sumpter’s conviction on the grounds that city‑specific rules give prosecutors “additional law enforcement tools” to combat crime, signaling an intent to defend or continue to rely on §6108 as a policy instrument even while courts parse its constitutionality [6] [5].
4. Divergent legal and political narratives
Second‑Amendment advocates hailed the Superior Court decision as a correction to a two‑tiered system that made open carry dependent on zip code, and urged legislative repeal of §6108; conversely, the DA and some city officials have defended the statute as a crime‑fighting mechanism, revealing an underlying policy conflict between public‑safety priorities and gun‑rights arguments that shapes enforcement choices going forward [7] [6] [5].
5. Law enforcement guidance, confusion, and local practice
A chiefs‑of‑police “Open Carry Guidance” document circulated to departments and summaries on legal sites indicate police leadership has sought to equip officers with interpretive guidance, but practical enforcement remains muddied: some arrests tied to visible weapons continued to occur, and legal analysts note that without a statewide uniform ruling or legislative change, officers and prosecutors will litigate cases case‑by‑case or rely on §6108 when they believe it applies [4] [8] [2].
6. What the reporting does not show—and why it matters
Available reporting establishes the Sumpter vacatur, the DA’s opposition to vacating charges, and guidance materials for police, but does not provide a comprehensive post‑ruling dataset of arrests, prosecutions, dismissals, or charging memoranda showing whether the DA systematically pursued or declined §6108 cases after June 2025; therefore, any portrait of enforcement trends beyond high‑profile cases requires further records—prosecutorial data, police arrest logs, and subsequent appellate rulings—that are not present in the cited sources [6] [1] [4] [2].