US Supreme Court rebuffs Biden, blocks pandemic-related eviction moratorium

In a rebuff to the Joe Biden administration, the US Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the pandemic-related moratorium, allowing property owners to evict millions of Americans who have failed to pay rent amidst the Covid-19 crisis.

The country’s apex court ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health agency of the United States, did not have the authority to impose the freeze.

“It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken,” the high-level bench said in its verdict. “But that has not happened. Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination.”

The judges asserted that the measures taken by the CDC “strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”

The current federal moratorium, which was imposed in early August, was supposed to expire in early October. It saw opposition by a group of landlords who challenged the CDC’s authority to impose the freeze.

The landlords argued that they had been losing as much as $19 billion a month due to federally imposed pandemic moratorium.

“Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it claims,” the association of property owners argued in their filing in the Supreme Court.

In addition to questioning the CDC's authority to impose the moratorium, real estate groups in the states of Georgia and Alabama told the high court that the freeze caused major financial hardships.

US continues to be the world's worst-hit country from the Covid-19 pandemic, recording over 38.6 million cases and over 635 thousand deaths. The new variants have led to an alarming spike in infections in recent weeks, despite the vaccination rate gaining pace.

More than 100,000 people have been hospitalized with Covid-19 in the country this month -- the record high since January -- as medical workers struggle with new wave of of the disease.

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Responding to the ruling, The White House on Thursday said the Biden Administration was "disappointed that the Supreme Court has blocked the most recent CDC eviction moratorium while confirmed cases of the Delta variant are significant across the country.”

As a result of this ruling, it said, “families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.”

The US Congress had approved the original eviction moratorium at the outset of the pandemic. When it expired in July 2020, former US President Donald Trump ordered the CDC to impose its own freeze, which it did in September. Biden extended that order through last month, leading to a legal battle.

It marks the second time this week that the US Supreme Court's conservative majority turned down a Biden initiative. On Tuesday the court asked the administration to restore an immigration policy requiring migrants to wait in Mexico while US officials process their asylum claims.

More than 3.5 million people have said they are likely to face eviction in the next two months, according to US Census Bureau estimates.

Some states have eviction moratoriums that are not affected by the Supreme Court's action — California, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Washington. The District of Columbia also has a local moratorium.

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