[5][6] Metcalfe is the founder of State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI),[8] an organization opposed to birthright citizenship.
On March 1, 2011, Metcalfe reintroduced HB 738, a bill which would direct police officers "to attempt to verify the immigration status of suspected illegal aliens."
[12] As chair of the Environment and Energy committee, Metcalf hosted an informational hearing in March 2019 to feature Gregory Wrightstone,[13][14][15] whose testimony was at odds with the scientific consensus on climate change.
[17][18] Metcalfe additionally urged the legislature to intervene by issuing subpoenas to investigate the election process, and to impeach Governor Wolf.
[17] [19] In September 2015, Metcalfe invited ProEnglish's Robert Vandervoora—a man with white nationalist ties and former head of Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance—to testify before Pennsylvania's state government committee.
[22] On December 5, 2017, Metcalfe strongly took issue with colleague Matthew Bradford touching his arm while speaking to him, saying, "I'm a heterosexual.
In September 2009, Metcalfe held up a Pennsylvania State Assembly resolution declaring October "Domestic Violence Awareness Month".
Metcalfe claimed that the bill "had language in it that brought men into the situation", citing this as evidence of a “homosexual agenda”.
[26] This met with criticism from Rep. Babette Josephs who said, "The gentleman from Butler has made this problem even worse and more men may be abused, even killed in their homes," on the House floor in 2009.
[31] In June 2013, after the Defense of Marriage Act had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, openly gay state representative Brian Sims tried to make a speech in the Pennsylvania House supporting the decision.
The head of the Pennsylvania branch of the Democratic Party responded similarly by strongly condemning Metcalfe, heavily censuring him as "a partisan hack who abuses his power at the expense of making government better for Pennsylvanians" and "a disgusting human being.