New York eviction moratorium partially halted by Supreme Court
The opinion was split with three liberal justices opposing
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The U.S. Supreme Court partially lifted a New York state ban on residential evictions during the coronavirus pandemic, giving a victory to a group of landlords who challenged it.
In a 6-3 decision, the court granted an emergency request by landlords to temporarily lift part of the ban.
The court’s order was unsigned and emphasized that it applied only to a part of the state law that barred evicting tenants who file a form claiming they have suffered economic difficulty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
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The original case was brought by a group of small landlords who said they had suffered economic hardship as a result of the law, which allowed the suspension of eviction proceedings simply by filling out a form.
With three dissenting votes, the court said New York could no longer enforce a provision that allows renters to stave off eviction by submitting a hardship declaration form that tells the state they lost income or had more expenses during the pandemic or that moving would harm their health. The pause on evictions expires at the end of August. The court’s ruling allows some evictions to resume.
"This scheme violates the Court’s longstanding teaching that ordinarily ‘no man can be a judge in his own case,’" the court wrote in a brief, unsigned opinion.
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But Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a dissenting opinion that the legal issue is not that clear. "Moreover, the challenged law will expire in less than three weeks," Breyer wrote, saying "such drastic relief" is not appropriate at this time. Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined his opinion.
Lower federal courts had rejected the plea by New York landlords to allow evictions to resume, and the state had urged the justices to follow suit.
One major difference between the New York and CDC moratoriums is that the state’s legislature enacted the moratorium into law, along with providing billions of dollars in assistance to renters and landlords. Congress failed to extend the nationwide eviction moratorium before the CDC acted on its own.
Associated Press contributed to this report