The Supreme Court voted 6-3 against part of New York state’s eviction moratorium on Thursday, before it was set to expire at the end of this month.
The COVID Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act (CEEFPA) was established by the state to protect renters during the coronavirus pandemic.
The legal issue is separate from a new moratorium that applies in most of the country that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed last week, according to the Associated Press.
Renters can no longer evade evictions by submitting a hardship declaration form to the state explaining lost income due to the pandemic or that moving would harm their health.
A separate measure protecting renters who can prove to a court they’ve suffered because of the pandemic remains in place.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonica Sotomayor dissented.
“This scheme violates the Court’s longstanding teaching that ordinarily ‘no man can be a judge in his own case,’” the court wrote in its opinion.
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.
“For these reasons, I would not grant relief now, and therefore respectfully dissent. Of course, if New York extends CEEFPA’s provisions in their current form, applicants can renew their request for an injunction.”
Lower federal courts rejected efforts from New York landlords to allow evictions to resume and the state had urged the justices to follow suit.
Attorney Randy Mastro, of Gibson Dunn, who represents landlords in the case, said this was a victory for small landlords who were not able to access their properties or receive rent payments for 17 months.
“On behalf of New York’s small landlords, we are extremely grateful to the Supreme Court for reaffirming that, ‘even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten,’” Mastro said in a statement.
“New York recently reopened in all other respects, yet its eviction moratorium remained in place, barring the courthouse door to landowners unable to gain access to their own properties from holdover tenants, many of whom haven’t paid rent for the past 17 months.
“We sought emergency relief because New York’s continuing moratorium violated owners’ constitutional rights and left small landlords struggling to survive, with no opportunity even to be heard in court, a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Now, all parties will have that right, thanks to today’s Supreme Court decision.”
The plaintiff in the case, the Rent Stabilization Associated [RSA], which represents more than 25,000 property owners of more than one million apartments and houses across the city, said that the state’s eviction moratorium “was anything but balanced,” letting many take advantage of it.
The RSA said “This will not open the floodgates to evictions.”
“That is a false narrative and it has never been the goal of this lawsuit,” RSA Chairman of the Board Aaron Sirulnick and President Joseph Strasburg said in a joint statement.
“We have been seeking a balanced approach – and the eviction moratorium was anything but balanced, as thousands of tenants who never lost their jobs took advantage of this blanket moratorium. Our goal is to get the state to do its job – to distribute the $2.6 billion in federally funded rent relief to financially desperate tenants and building owners. That’s what protects tenants and keeps them in their homes, and it will allow owners to catch up on their property taxes, water bills, mortgages, repairs and maintenance.”