Supreme Court blocks new eviction moratorium

The Supreme Court on Thursday lifted the latest federal ban on evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, siding with landlords against a moratorium the Biden administration imposed this month despite questions about its legality. Three liberal justices dissented.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly renewed the eviction moratorium for millions of tenants affected by the pandemic, in large part to allow them to remain in their homes as state and local governments struggle to disburse some $47 billion of rental assistance provided by Congress. The current order was set to expire Oct. 3; as of July 31, just $4.7 billion of the rental assistance had reached landlords and tenants.

But in Thursday’s unsigned opinion, the court’s conservative majority said the temporary eviction ban exceeded the CDC’s authority to combat communicable diseases, forcing landlords to bear the pandemic’s costs.

“The moratorium has put … millions of landlords across the country, at risk of irreparable harm by depriving them of rent payments with no guarantee of eventual recovery,” the court said. “Many landlords have modest means. And preventing them from evicting tenants who breach their leases intrudes on one of the most fundamental elements of property ownership—the right to exclude.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the decision disappointing, though President Biden had acknowledged the order was legally shaky.

Joe Biden is now essentially confiscating property from its legal owners. On August 4, Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended a moratorium on evictions. If a tenant refuses to pay his rent, this decree states that the owner of the home cannot evict him, even if the owner needs that rent money to pay his own mortgage. The original eviction moratorium was imposed by Congress last year as part of a law that tried to soften some of the effects of record unemployment due to government-imposed lockdowns. Now, jobs are plentiful, so this measure is not needed. More importantly, Biden and the cdc bureaucrats have no constitutional authority to do this. So why are they forcing it through?

Biden and the radical left are consolidating their power. They are weakening and bankrupting middle-class Americans, worsening the divisions in our society, and moving us away from the rule of law and toward the rule of whoever grabs power.

The original eviction moratorium was a violation of private property rights and therefore unconstitutional. But at least it had a veneer of legitimacy since it was implemented not by executive branch bureaucracy but through a law passed by the representatives of the American people in Congress. It was contested all the way to the Supreme Court, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh weakly sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three other liberals to uphold it. He tried to have it both ways by saying that he would not uphold the moratorium again after it expired on July 31 unless it was in a law passed by Congress. Now the court gets to watch Biden and those behind him as they grind away the rule of law even more.

The radical leftists are replacing the rule of law with the rule of their will! Anthony Fauci is the science, and radical Democrats are the law.