Supreme Court Rejects Request to Lift Federal Ban on Evictions

The challengers argued that the moratorium was not authorized by the law the agency relied on, the Public Health Service Act of 1944.

The 1944 law, the challengers wrote, was concerned with quarantines and inspections to stop the spread of disease and did not bestow on the agency “the unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of communicable disease — whether eviction moratoria, worship limits, nationwide lockdowns, school closures or vaccine mandates.”

The C.D.C. argued that the moratorium was authorized by the 1944 law. Evictions would accelerate the spread of the coronavirus, the agency said, by forcing people “to move, often into close quarters in new shared housing settings with friends or family, or congregate settings such as homeless shelters.”

The case was complicated by congressional action in December, when lawmakers briefly extended the C.D.C.’s moratorium through the end of January in an appropriations measure. When Congress took no further action, the agency again imposed moratoriums under the 1944 law.

In its Supreme Court brief, the government argued that it was significant that Congress had embraced the agency’s action, if only briefly.

Last month, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the Federal District Court in Washington ruled that the agency had exceeded its powers in issuing the moratorium.

“The question for the court,” she wrote, “is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the C.D.C. the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/us/politics/supreme-court-eviction-ban.html