The Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s “targeted” eviction moratorium Thursday, saying Congress would have to act to enforce a federal pause on evictions meant to provide protections to renters during the coronavirus pandemic.
A majority of justices ruled in favor of petitioning landlords are “virtually certain” to succeed in arguing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its legal authority in issuing its newest moratorium earlier this month. The court vacated a lower court stay that blocked enforcement of a decision that already overturned a previous rendition of the moratorium.
The court’s decision delivers a decisive victory to landlords, who for months have complained of financial injury in asking courts to stop the government from preventing evictions.
“The moratorium has put the applicants, along with millions of landlords across the country, at risk of irreparable harm by depriving them of rent payments with no guarantee of eventual recovery,” the court acknowledged in its unsigned order Thursday.
The court also said it “strains credulity” that the provision of law that the CDC asserted in issuing its order, a statute passed in the 1944 Public Health Service Act, grants the agency such broad authority to intervene between landlords and tenants.
“It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened,” the court said. “Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination.”
“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it,” the court concluded.
FEDERAL APPEALS COURT DECLINES REQUEST TO BLOCK CDC EVICTION MORATORIUM
Its three liberal members — Justice Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor — dissented, arguing a need to grant more deference to the CDC.
“The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high transmission rates,” Breyer wrote in the dissent.
The dissent added it was “far from ‘demonstrably’ clear” the CDC lacked the legal authority to impose the moratorium.
The White House expressed its disappointment in the ruling on Thursday, pointing to the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19 to justify the importance of the moratorium.
“As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19,” the White House said.
Led by the Alabama Association of Realtors, landlords previously made it up to the Supreme Court on the question of the previous eviction moratorium, which expired July 31. The landlords failed to get the moratorium nixed, as the court elected in a June 29 decision to let it run out.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, concurred with four other justices in that decision, citing the moratorium’s pending expiration and the need for the federal government to continue distributing rental assistance.
Kavanaugh concurred then, even though he said he agreed the CDC exceeded its authority, foreshadowing the ultimate conclusion delivered Thursday.
“In my view, clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31,” Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, wrote in his June 29 concurrence.
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The previous moratorium expired, but the Biden administration announced another moratorium “targeted” at COVID-19 hot spots, days after the July 31 expiration and significant pressure from congressional Democrats.
Landlords quickly reignited their court battle, losing in the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals before Thursday’s victory for their emergency application to vacate the stay.
