A divided Supreme Court has ended a national moratorium on evictions in parts of the country ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, removing protections for millions of Americans who have not been able to make rent payments.
A coalition of landlords and real estate trade groups in Alabama and Georgia challenged the latest extension of a moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued Aug. 3 and intended to run through Oct. 3.
On a 6 to 3 vote announced Thursday night, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed that the ban on evictions should not stand.
It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the COVID — 19 Delta variant,” said the court’s unsigned opinion. “But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends … It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here.”
The court’s three liberal justices dissented. “The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high transmission rates,” wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
A district judge in Washington, D.C., and several other courts around the country, said the powers granted to CDC to protect public health during a pandemic did not include a ban on evictions for those who fell behind on their payments.
But Judge Dabney Friedrich stayed her order so that the administration could appeal.
While the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to leave in place what it called a “lawful and urgently needed response to an unprecedented public emergency,” a majority of justices already had signaled agreement with Friedrich.
Over the objections of the court’s four most conservative justices, the court in June left a previous version of the eviction ban in place, when it was supposed to expire at the end of July. But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who cast the deciding vote in that decision, also said he believed any extension of the ban would require explicit congressional action.
Congress did not respond, however, and initially the Biden administration said its hands were tied. After pressure from constituent groups and liberals in Congress, one of whom camped outside the Capitol to draw attention to the issue, the administration issued a new and slightly narrowed version of the moratorium. But even the president was fatalistic.
“I went ahead and did it,” Biden told reporters. “But here’s the deal: I can’t guarantee you the court won’t rule [that] we don’t have that authority. But at least we’ll have the ability, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month at least — I hope longer than that.”
The challengers in their brief to the court used the president’s words to argue that the administration knew it was on unstable legal ground.
“The only plausible explanation for the extended moratorium is that it was issued in response to political pressure from Capitol Hill for the express purpose of using litigation delays to distribute more rental assistance,” their brief says. “Nearly a year of overreach is enough.”
Congress originally imposed an eviction moratorium. When it expired, President Donald Trump ordered the CDC to impose one, which has been extended several times.
The legal issue involves the Public Health Service Act. It gives the agency authority to “make and enforce such regulations … necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases” across states or from foreign lands.
But challengers, and some lower courts who have reviewed the issue, say the power is limited by another provision contained within the act. In describing the agency’s power, it lists measures such as “fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary.”
To the challengers, that means the CDC is finding its broad authority in a “rarely used statute from 1944 whose domain has previously been limited to matters such as the sale of baby turtles.”
They say the CDC is claiming “unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of any communicable disease — common cold included — whether it be eviction moratoria, worship limits, nationwide lockdowns, school closures, or vaccine mandates.”
The ban on evictions applies to renters who “otherwise would likely need to move to congregate [or shared-living] settings where COVID spreads quickly and easily, or would be rendered homeless and forced into shelters or other settings that would increase their susceptibility to COVID,” the CDC says.
It did not wipe away rental bills for people who’d fallen behind on payment.
To address that need, Congress allocated $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance. But the money has been painfully slow to get off the ground. Technical glitches dogged online systems. Landlords and tenants without Internet had even more trouble applying for aid — if they knew about the funding at all.
The amount of money that’s actually reached people in need is a fraction of the $46.5 billion appropriated by Congress for emergency aid.
Of the $25 billion appropriated in December, state and local programs spent about $5.1 billion between January and the end of July, according to figures released Wednesday by the Treasury Department. A March relief package provided the other $21.5 billion. About $108 million of that bucket had been spent as of June.
Last month, nearly $1.7 billion was spent on rent, utilities and missed payments for vulnerable households, according to the Treasury data. That’s only a slight uptick from the $1.5 billion that was disbursed in June, despite intense pressure on the Biden administration and local officials to ramp up spending before July 31, when the initial CDC moratorium expired.
The White House implored state and local governments, courts, legal aid organizations and community groups to do all they could to slow-track evictions and keep people in their homes.
But many housing advocates said the administration took too long to direct so much public attention towards the looming eviction crisis. And as the delta variant spread and covid cases soared, administration officials scrambled to offer an explanation of how the moratorium would be allowed to expire while so much rental aid was still untapped.
With its August order, the CDC aimed to temporarily halt evictions in areas experiencing an increase in coronavirus cases, citing significant transmission of the delta variant. The agency said at the time that more than 80 percent of U.S. counties were classified as experiencing substantial or high levels of community transmission.
“It is intended to target specific areas of the country where cases are rapidly increasing, which likely would be exacerbated by mass evictions,” the CDC said in its order.
It is estimated around 6 million renters remain behind on payments, according to Moody’s.
Depending on where they live, tenants may still be protected by state or municipal bans or restrictions on who may be evicted. Tenants in at least eight states and D.C. will have some pandemic-related protections through the end of August. But those could be threatened as well.
The Supreme Court earlier this month lifted New York’s pandemic-related ban on residential evictions, siding with a group of landlords who said their rights were being violated.
The CDC case is Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services.
Article
Doc
A coalition of landlords and real estate trade groups in Alabama and Georgia challenged the latest extension of a moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued Aug. 3 and intended to run through Oct. 3.
On a 6 to 3 vote announced Thursday night, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed that the ban on evictions should not stand.
It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the COVID — 19 Delta variant,” said the court’s unsigned opinion. “But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends … It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here.”
The court’s three liberal justices dissented. “The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high transmission rates,” wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
A district judge in Washington, D.C., and several other courts around the country, said the powers granted to CDC to protect public health during a pandemic did not include a ban on evictions for those who fell behind on their payments.
But Judge Dabney Friedrich stayed her order so that the administration could appeal.
While the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to leave in place what it called a “lawful and urgently needed response to an unprecedented public emergency,” a majority of justices already had signaled agreement with Friedrich.
Over the objections of the court’s four most conservative justices, the court in June left a previous version of the eviction ban in place, when it was supposed to expire at the end of July. But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who cast the deciding vote in that decision, also said he believed any extension of the ban would require explicit congressional action.
Congress did not respond, however, and initially the Biden administration said its hands were tied. After pressure from constituent groups and liberals in Congress, one of whom camped outside the Capitol to draw attention to the issue, the administration issued a new and slightly narrowed version of the moratorium. But even the president was fatalistic.
“I went ahead and did it,” Biden told reporters. “But here’s the deal: I can’t guarantee you the court won’t rule [that] we don’t have that authority. But at least we’ll have the ability, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month at least — I hope longer than that.”
The challengers in their brief to the court used the president’s words to argue that the administration knew it was on unstable legal ground.
“The only plausible explanation for the extended moratorium is that it was issued in response to political pressure from Capitol Hill for the express purpose of using litigation delays to distribute more rental assistance,” their brief says. “Nearly a year of overreach is enough.”
Congress originally imposed an eviction moratorium. When it expired, President Donald Trump ordered the CDC to impose one, which has been extended several times.
The legal issue involves the Public Health Service Act. It gives the agency authority to “make and enforce such regulations … necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases” across states or from foreign lands.
But challengers, and some lower courts who have reviewed the issue, say the power is limited by another provision contained within the act. In describing the agency’s power, it lists measures such as “fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary.”
To the challengers, that means the CDC is finding its broad authority in a “rarely used statute from 1944 whose domain has previously been limited to matters such as the sale of baby turtles.”
They say the CDC is claiming “unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of any communicable disease — common cold included — whether it be eviction moratoria, worship limits, nationwide lockdowns, school closures, or vaccine mandates.”
The ban on evictions applies to renters who “otherwise would likely need to move to congregate [or shared-living] settings where COVID spreads quickly and easily, or would be rendered homeless and forced into shelters or other settings that would increase their susceptibility to COVID,” the CDC says.
It did not wipe away rental bills for people who’d fallen behind on payment.
To address that need, Congress allocated $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance. But the money has been painfully slow to get off the ground. Technical glitches dogged online systems. Landlords and tenants without Internet had even more trouble applying for aid — if they knew about the funding at all.
The amount of money that’s actually reached people in need is a fraction of the $46.5 billion appropriated by Congress for emergency aid.
Of the $25 billion appropriated in December, state and local programs spent about $5.1 billion between January and the end of July, according to figures released Wednesday by the Treasury Department. A March relief package provided the other $21.5 billion. About $108 million of that bucket had been spent as of June.
Last month, nearly $1.7 billion was spent on rent, utilities and missed payments for vulnerable households, according to the Treasury data. That’s only a slight uptick from the $1.5 billion that was disbursed in June, despite intense pressure on the Biden administration and local officials to ramp up spending before July 31, when the initial CDC moratorium expired.
The White House implored state and local governments, courts, legal aid organizations and community groups to do all they could to slow-track evictions and keep people in their homes.
But many housing advocates said the administration took too long to direct so much public attention towards the looming eviction crisis. And as the delta variant spread and covid cases soared, administration officials scrambled to offer an explanation of how the moratorium would be allowed to expire while so much rental aid was still untapped.
With its August order, the CDC aimed to temporarily halt evictions in areas experiencing an increase in coronavirus cases, citing significant transmission of the delta variant. The agency said at the time that more than 80 percent of U.S. counties were classified as experiencing substantial or high levels of community transmission.
“It is intended to target specific areas of the country where cases are rapidly increasing, which likely would be exacerbated by mass evictions,” the CDC said in its order.
It is estimated around 6 million renters remain behind on payments, according to Moody’s.
Depending on where they live, tenants may still be protected by state or municipal bans or restrictions on who may be evicted. Tenants in at least eight states and D.C. will have some pandemic-related protections through the end of August. But those could be threatened as well.
The Supreme Court earlier this month lifted New York’s pandemic-related ban on residential evictions, siding with a group of landlords who said their rights were being violated.
The CDC case is Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services.
Article
Doc
