Pa. Supreme Court declines to rule on Pittsburgh rental registry law

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will not issue an opinion on Pittsburgh’s rental registry law, saying it’s moot since the city replaced it with new legislation in 2023.

That 2023 ordinance is still being challenged Allegheny County Common Pleas Court even though many of the most onerous restrictions from the 2015 bill have been lifted, including requiring a local agent and the requirement to publish ownership on an online database.

“This is not going to end,” said John Corcoran, the attorney representing Landlord Service Bureau, one of the plaintiffs in the underlying lawsuit.

He said on Tuesday that there is no need for any rental ordinance in the city, and that it was simply a money grab.

“The city already has building codes to protect the safety of all residents, and landlords should not be singled out,” Corcoran said.

City officials, though, said the ordinance was designed to protect renters.

Olga George, a spokeswoman for the city, said the administration is disappointed in the state Supreme Court’s decision but intends to begin enforcement of the revised ordinance “to help make Pittsburgh an even greater place to live.”

In 2015, City Council passed an ordinance setting rules and a registration fee structure to ensure rental units in Pittsburgh met building standards. Some of the rules included paying for a per-unit registry permit each year and to allow the city to inspect the rental properties.

However, Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, the Landlord Service Bureau and others sued, alleging that the ordinance was unconstitutional and amounted to an illegal tax.

Although an Allegheny County judge ruled in the city’s favor in 2017, last year, the Commonwealth Court reversed, saying that the city did not have the authority to enact such a wide-ranging law.

The city appealed to the state Supreme Court, but at the same time, council passed a new ordinance that stripped out many of the previous requirements.

In its two-page order on Tuesday, the state Supreme Court said that the case before it, argued on April 9, became moot by the city’s “wholesale replacement” of the 2015 ordinance.

While the city was seeking an advisory opinion, the majority of the court apparently did not want to provide one.

In an 18-page, dissenting statement by Justice David Wecht and joined by Justice Christine Donohue, he wrote that the court should have addressed the issue as a matter of “public importance.”

“A final decision on the matter would provide guidance for potentially hundreds of public officials whose offices and authority it affects,” Wecht wrote. “The simple fact is that it is the public that benefits most from a decision in this matter, directly and through the clarity it would give local legislators regarding what they may and may not do to oversee and regulate their local rental markets.”

The lawsuit on the 2023 ordinance raises constitutional claims, including privacy concerns, equal protection, search and seizure and contract claims, Wecht said.

“While the landlord’s interests are private, and have been provisionally vindicated by the commonwealth court, it is the citizenry’s very public right to enjoy robust local government to the extent permitted by law that is at issue in this case. As well, the degree to which local municipalities may regulate their rental markets is an issue of great importance to the public.”

Wecht noted that the commonwealth court’s opinion on the 2015 ordinance remains in effect for other home-rule municipalities in Pennsylvania.

“For that reason, the commonwealth court’s sweeping precedential decision on this novel question severely hamstrings the ability of governments selected by hundreds of thousands if not millions of Pennsylvanians to exercise a classically recognized function of the common-law and statutory police power.”