South Fayette in Allegheny County and Cecil, Peters, Mt. Pleasant and Robinson in Washington County led the group that sued to strike down the state limits on local control. The municipalities argued that by limiting those powers, the law unconstitutionally barred them from protecting residents and property rights by keeping drilling away from schools, parks and businesses.

The 162-page Supreme Court decision spoke at length of the state’s history of environmental degradation, and decreed that the state does not have absolute power over municipalities in terms of environmental protection. Act 13 puts municipalities in direct conflict with their constitutional power to protect the environment, the court said, ruling that the state overstepped its powers by trying to apply uniform rules to all municipalities.

“To put it succinctly, our citizens buying homes and raising families in areas zoned residential had a reasonable expectation concerning the environment in which they were living, often for years or even decades,” Chief Justice Castille wrote. “Act 13 fundamentally disrupted those expectations, and ordered local government to take measures to effect the new uses, irrespective of local concerns.”