*The article below was posted by The Florida Association of Realtors. It is not my original writing.
Landlords Ask Supreme Court to End the
Eviction Moratorium
One judge ruled to end the eviction moratorium, but an appeals
court refused to make any changes right away. Landlords now want the U.S.
Supreme Court to weigh in.
WASHINGTON – A lawyer representing
landlords and housing providers asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to halt the
Biden administration’s moratorium on evictions, which was put into place
because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The request comes after a three-judge panel of
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Wednesday declined to stop
the moratorium while a case challenging its constitutionality is pending.
“Landlords have been losing over $13 billion
every month under the moratorium, and the total effect of the CDC’s overreach
may reach up to $200 billion if it remains in effect for a year,” states the
landlords’ request to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
The landlords won in the district court in the
District of Columbia, but the judge paused the ruling while it was appealed,
leaving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction
moratorium intact – for now.
The appeals court affirmed that move this
week, allowing the lawsuit to proceed but kept landlords from evicting
non-paying tenants.
“The moratorium was tailored to the necessity
that prompted it,” wrote the three-judge panel. “[The Department of Health and
Human Services] carefully targeted it to the subset of evictions it determined
to be necessary to curb the spread of the deadly and quickly spreading COVID-19
pandemic.”
The landlords hope the Supreme Court will
reverse that move.
“The stay order cannot stand. As both the
Sixth Circuit and the district court here recognized, Congress never gave the
CDC the staggering amount of power it now claims,” the landlord’s court filing
states. The moratorium bans landlords from evicting tenants while the order is
enforced, so landlords are unable to remove a renter who can’t pay rent.
The CDC first issued the moratorium in
September under former President Trump, but the government has continued to
renew it, even after vaccines have been widely distributed.
Lawyers for the landlords said they fear that
the government will renew the moratorium again instead of letting it lapse at
the end of June as scheduled.
Lawsuits challenging the government’s eviction
moratorium are piling up, as property owners, including struggling mom-and-pop
operators, ask the courts why they are expected to take a financial hit while
non-paying tenants are protected by the moratoriums.
Some district courts have delivered wins for
the landlords, while others have ruled for the government. Recently, the 6th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the government’s moratorium but did
not issue a nationwide injunction.
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