B&L Wins Preliminary Injunction to Protect Pine and Spruce Street Residents from Illegal Loading Zones
Philadelphia, PA – August 14, 2025
An old adage says “you can’t fight City Hall.” Well, Bochetto & Lentz has shown time and time again that this is not true. In a decisive victory for neighborhood residents, Judge Thomas-Street has halted the City of Philadelphia from eliminating parking spaces and creating new, unlawful loading zones along the Pine and Spruce Street corridor. The ruling requires the City to cease and desist all ongoing construction, signage installation, enforcement efforts, or public works associated with the proposed neighborhood loading zones, immediately restoring the status quo that residents have long relied upon.
The case was brought by Friends of Pine & Spruce (“FOPS”), a non-profit community organization, challenging the City’s attempt to unilaterally reconfigure parking and traffic regulations in the neighborhood without proper legislative authority. The outcome preserves essential permitted parking access for residents, many of whom are elderly or disabled, and reaffirms the fundamental principle that the executive branch cannot act beyond the powers granted to it by law. All of this comes in the wake of Bochetto & Lentz’s landmark appellate victory in Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, Inc., et al. v. City of Philadelphia, et al., No. 516 C.D. 2023 (Pa. Commw. Aug. 6, 2025), in which the en banc Commonwealth Court clarified the contours of the inter-branch separation of powers for municipal governments, while declaring the former Mayor of Philadelphia’s executive order canceling Columbus Day unlawful.
Court Ruling Summary
Judge Thomas-Street’s opinion delivered a clear and detailed rejection of the City’s legal position, describing its arguments as “circular reasoning.” In promulgating these regulations, the City completely ignored a sweeping 1981 ordinance requiring permitted parking along the affected corridor. Instead, the City based its entire legal authority for these regulations on an unrelated ordinance from the following year — one that did not even reference loading zones at all. The City claimed Section 5-500 of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter gave it authority to create the new loading zones, but Judge Thomas-Street disagreed, noting the Streets Department can only act on powers already granted by an existing statute or ordinance. As Judge Thomas-Street put it, the City’s position “would only be effective here if there was an existing statute or ordinance authorizing the creation of new loading zones” — and no such law exists.
Rejecting the City’s facile arguments, Judge Thomas-Street ultimately concluded that the City had “stitched-together” various statutes from the Charter and Code to create an appearance of authority, when in fact none existed. The Court held that no section of the Philadelphia Code granted the power to create such new loading zones without prior legislative authorization. Of course, FOPS had alerted the City to this fact long before these regulations even went into effect.
Key Excerpts from the Court’s Opinion
Among the Court’s most compelling findings:
- “There does not appear to be any statute or ordinance that authorizes the Streets Department to create the new loading zones, and this court is not convinced that the stitched-together statutes from the Home Rule Charter to the Philadelphia Code authorize the Streets Department to eliminate residential parking spaces to create new loading zones.”
- “Further, because the City has already begun eliminating parking spaces to create new loading zones, older or disabled residents would now be forced to walk up an entire city block to exit a vehicle or unload items . . . There are no monetary damages that would fix the new physical requirements . . . especially [for] the elderly and disabled.”
- “Although the claimed basis for creating these new loading zones is to prevent parking in bike lanes, there is no guarantee that these new loading zones will prevent cars from stopping in bike lanes, so it appears that only the interests of the residents who have lost parking spaces have been adversely affected.”
What Bochetto & Lentz Argued
In court, Attorneys George Bochetto and Ryan T. Kirk made several critical points that proved to be decisive:
- Shifting Legal Authority: The City’s justifications for the loading zones changed repeatedly throughout the litigation, undermining its credibility and revealing the lack of any true legal authority for its actions.
- Irreparable Harm: Bochetto & Lentz presented compelling evidence, including testimony from a disabled Pine Street resident who cannot access ride-share services due to the distance at which these loading zones are located. This testimony underscored the urgent and tangible harm residents would face without an injunction.
- Separation of Powers: Citing the firm’s recent Conference of Presidents victory against the City, Attorneys Bochetto and Kirk argued that the executive branch cannot act in areas reserved for legislative authority. Just as in this recent decision, where the Commonwealth Court ruled 7-0 in favor of Bochetto & Lentz, the City here sought to implement sweeping policy changes without going through City Council.
- Restoring the Status Quo: The residents have historically cooperated with the City to allow bike lanes on Pine and Spruce without implementing loading zones, and that arrangement worked. Bochetto & Lentz argued that this mutually beneficial status quo should be maintained.
As the firm emphasized, the City cannot act absent official legislative authorization, and courts will not permit this type of executive overreach.
Next Steps
The Court’s order halts all further implementation of the disputed loading zones unless and until the City obtains legislative authorization. This ruling means no further parking spaces can be removed, no new signage or construction can proceed, and no enforcement actions related to the proposed loading zones can be taken. The decision stands as both a practical win for the affected residents and an important reaffirmation of Philadelphia’s separation of powers — preventing the executive branch from bypassing the legislative process.
Statement from George Bochetto: “We are very pleased to get this result for our clients. An injunction to stop government action is not easy, but we were on the right side of this case and we had a good judge willing to make a hard ruling that was correct.”
For more information, please contact:
George Bochetto
Bochetto & Lentz, P.C.
(215) 735-3900