The Republican state Senate majority leader announced Friday that he will introduce legislation that, if enacted, would abolish the Philadelphia Traffic Court and transfer its caseload to Philadelphia Municipal Court. The legislative push comes in the wake of the First Judicial District’s internal report last Thanksgiving, which painted the court as having “two tracks of justice one for the connected and another for the unwitting general public.”
The internal report suggested several potential structural reform options, including one that mirrors the proposal of state Senator Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, to eliminate the Traffic Court entirely and transfer its jurisdiction to the Philadelphia Municipal Court. The report also recommended that Traffic Court judges be lawyers or that the position of Traffic Court judges be eliminated in favor of civil-servant administrative hearing officers who would be subject to more oversight than independently elected judges.
