Emergency file

The Supreme Court split on Thursday night Approved the request A call from a group of New York landlords to lift part of the state’s suspension of evictions that was implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.The ruling is in Chrysafis v. Score Three days ago, a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., heard oral arguments over the challenge of the Biden administration’s new federal moratorium on expulsions in most parts of the country.

New York State’s moratorium allows New York tenants to avoid eviction by declaring that they have suffered “financial hardship” due to the pandemic. New York issued a moratorium in 2020 and extended it to August 31, 2021.

The landlord went to the Federal Court of New York to challenge the suspension order, arguing that it violated their due process rights because it allows tenants to suspend the eviction process without any evidence that the pandemic has affected them, and does not give the landlord the opportunity to refute them. Views. assertion. The federal district court rejected their challenge, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the landlord’s request to suspend the suspension during the appeal.

Landlords Turn to the Supreme Court At the end of July, told the judge that “the court door has been barred from entering the landlord in New York” for more than a year. They argued that when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) recently announced that the state’s “disaster emergency” had ended and the economy was reopening, the state could not use the pandemic to justify maintaining its deportation ban.

Opposing the landlord’s request to block the state’s suspension, New York pointed to a decision in late June in which the Supreme Court had disagreements. Allow the previous version of the Federal Deportation Suspension Order to remain for one monthIn this case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided a crucial fifth vote to maintain the suspension. He wrote that the Centers for Disease Control exceeded its authority to extend the moratorium nationwide, but he, together with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal judges of the court, voted for the moratorium because the moratorium was originally scheduled for 7. Expires on 31st.

Soon after the federal moratorium expired, the CDC issued a new 60-day moratorium prohibiting evictions in the country’s most affected areas of the Delta variant. The legal challenge to the new federal suspension order may soon be submitted to the judge.

In the New York case, the state emphasized that its moratorium was originally scheduled to end on August 31, and that state authorities “are allocating millions of dollars in congressional-appropriated rental assistance benefits to landlords and their tenants, which will cause many eviction procedures. It’s unnecessary.” The state warned that lifting the moratorium now would only “make the courts suddenly flooded with deportation procedures, thereby undermining the state’s fragile and sustained recovery from the pandemic.” New York argues that it is in line with the previous federal injunction. The challenges are different. The ban is mainly focused on the CDC’s lack of power to issue bans, while this case involves a state’s core power to supervise its own affairs.

In an unsigned short order on Thursday, the Supreme Court approved the landlord’s request to prevent New York from enforcing part of the COVID Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act, which usually allows tenants to avoid eviction without a hearing , Just need to prove that they have suffered financial hardship due to the pandemic. The court explained that such a plan “violated the court’s long-standing doctrine that generally, “no one can serve as a judge in his own case.” However, the court continued that tenants can still raise financial issues caused by the pandemic. , As a defense. court.

Justice Stephen Breyer opposed the court’s order in a three-and-a-half-page opinion. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan also joined the opinion. Breyer emphasized that the eviction ban could have ended on its own in less than three weeks, alleviating the difficulties of New York landlords. He pointed out that the assistance the state is distributing could also alleviate such difficulties, which may be used to provide landlords. Repay the rent. Regardless, Breyer went on to say that any difficulties for landlords must also be weighed against the difficulties of tenants, who “will now be forced to face eviction procedures earlier than expected.” Breyer reminds his readers that all of this happened during “a serious and unpredictable public health crisis.” Breyer cited Roberts’ consent in a May 2020 case in which the court refused to lift California’s restrictions on church worshipers. Breyer wrote that he would not “guess that politically responsible officials would How to best’protect and protect’ the people of New York.”

This article is Originally published in Howe on the Court.