Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his Montgomery County neighbors are now suing each other in two separate courts over roughly 2,900 square feet of disputed yard where the governor’s security detail built an eight-foot fence, according to court filings reported by 6abc Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Neighbors Jeremy and Simone Mock filed the first suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that Shapiro, his wife Lori, and acting State Police Commissioner George Bivens illegally occupied a strip of the Mocks’ Abington Township property to construct the security barrier. The Shapiros, in turn, filed a competing action in Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, asking a judge to declare that the disputed land is legally theirs.
The dispute traces back to a security review the governor’s detail conducted after an arsonist firebombed Shapiro’s official Harrisburg residence in April 2025, an attack that pushed the state to spend millions reinforcing his properties, according to the Inquirer’s reporting. That review found the Shapiros had been using a sliver of the neighboring lot for more than two decades without realizing it fell outside their own deed. The Shapiros argue Pennsylvania’s 21-year adverse possession law entitles them to keep it; the Mocks say they rejected an offer from the Shapiros to simply buy the land outright.
Court records reviewed by the Inquirer describe additional friction beyond the fence line, including arborvitae trees and other plants placed on the Mocks’ side of the property, state police drone flights over their yard, and threats to remove trees the Mocks consider healthy. The Mocks’ complaint argues the governor “exercised his power by virtue of state law” in ways that “violate clearly established constitutional rights” a former attorney general should have recognized. A spokesperson for the governor’s office called the Mocks’ suit “a shameless political stunt” intended to exploit legitimate security concerns.
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III ruled on July 8 that the case can move forward against Shapiro and his wife as private homeowners, even though claims against him in his official capacity as governor were dismissed. CBS Philadelphia reported that Bartle wrote the dispute “extend[s] far beyond a disagreement between neighbors over the metes and boundaries of their properties,” allowing the federal case to proceed alongside the Shapiros’ state court action. Both lawsuits remain active, meaning a sitting governor and his next-door neighbors are now litigating the same eight-foot fence in two different courthouses at once.
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