A federal judge has refused landlords’ request to put the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium on hold, though she made clear she thinks it’s illegal.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich on Friday said her “hands are tied” by an appellate ruling the last time courts considered the evictions moratorium in the spring.
Alabama landlords who are challenging the moratorium are likely to appeal.
Friedrich wrote that the new temporary ban on evictions the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed last week is substantially similar to the version she ruled was illegal in May. At the time, Freidrich put her ruling on hold to allow the administration to appeal.
This time, she said, she is bound to follow a ruling from the appeals court that sits above her, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
If the D.C. Circuit doesn’t give the landlords what they want, they are expected to seek Supreme Court involvement.
In late June, the high court refused by a 5-4 vote to allow evictions to resume. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, part of the slim majority, said he agreed with Friedrich, but was voting to keep the moratorium in place because it was set to expire at the end of July.
Kavanaugh said then that he would reject any additional extension without clear authorization from Congress, which has not been able to take action.
In discussing the new moratorium last week, President Joe Biden acknowledged there were questions about its legality, but said a court fight over the new CDC order would buy time for the distribution of some of the $45 billion in rental assistance that has been approved but not yet used.
In a statement issued later Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the administration is “pleased that the district court left the moratorium in place,” but acknowledged “further proceedings in this case are likely.”
“Throughout the pandemic, preventing evictions and keeping people in their homes has been a proven way of slowing the spread of COVID-19,” Psaki said. “The Administration believes that CDC’s new moratorium is a proper use of its lawful authority to protect the public health.”
President Biden, Psaki said, called on state and local officials and judges to issue moratoriums at the local level, and urged those same officials to distribute “move aggressively to distribute the $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance funds” provided in the Dec. 2020 relief bill and March’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, the American Rescue Plan.
Biden also urged landlords to seek federal financial assistance rather than evict tenants, and echoed Attorney General Merrick Garland’s call “for state and local courts to implement policies to discourage eviction filings until landlords and tenants have sought emergency rental assistance funds.”
The ban announced last week could help keep millions in their homes as the coronavirus’ delta variant has spread and states have been slow to release federal rental aid. It would temporarily halt evictions in counties with “substantial and high levels” of virus transmissions and would cover areas where 90% of the U.S. population lives.
The announcement was a reversal for the Biden administration, which allowed an earlier moratorium to lapse over the weekend after saying a Supreme Court ruling prevented an extension. That ripped open a dramatic split between the White House and progressive Democrats who insisted the administration do more to prevent some 3.6 million Americans from losing their homes during the COVID-19 crisis.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
